Can I use netlify dev --live before linking repo to Netlify?

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1

I hope this isn’t a stupid question:

I’m developing a Gatsby site locally. I have it under version control and on a private Github repo. I don’t have full buy-in on Netlify and Gatsby from the boss yet and it would be awesome to use to use netlify dev --live to let the boss see a working prototype before putting the site on Netlify. I don’t want the site to be publicly accessible. Password protection would solve this problem for me, but again, I don’t have buy in just yet, so I can’t pony up for a paid account yet.

Is this possible?

2

Hi there, no, you can’t use --live without linking a site. That said, you don’t need to necessarily have a deploy in the repo, as long as the site was created and linked. Let me know if this helps!

3

Thanks for the reply @perry. How do you create a new Netlify site from Github without a deploy?

4

let me ask this way: if you create the repo on github but do not push to it, are you able to create the link?

5

I have a github repo. When I log into Netlify, I only see the option for “New Site From Git”.

6

Yup, that’s the default and the “happy path” our UI tries to guide you into, but you can instead choose to deploy a site in different ways:

  1. drag and drop - probably simplest, zip up a folder with some files in it and drag to that same screen showing the git button (there should be a dotted-line box at the bottom of that page, which you can drop content into). See Create deploys | Netlify Docs for more details.

  2. you can also deploy a site via our CLI (useful if you already have a site built locally): Get started with Netlify CLI | Netlify Docs

7

thanks, @fool. that’s cool.

but still I need some sort of commit to link a Netlify site to a git repo i have on a dev machine, correct? This is probably a bit of an edge case and I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble getting buy-in, so no biggie. I was just excited to try out Netlify dev --live but don’t want to push my whole repo to Netlify just yet.

8

Hmm, I don’t think you do need to do that. I think you can deploy with no git connection at all, just by running netlify sites:create from your local copy, and once you have that (local) content deployed, you can use netlify dev without any need for anything git-related.

9

Does netlify sites:create push my code up to Netflify where it would be public?

10

OK, cool. So if anyone has this specific case in the future (want to use netlify dev --live before deploying any code):

  1. use netlify sites:create from the CLI to create a site on netlify
  2. use netlify link and choose the name of the site you just created
  3. netlify dev --live now works without pushing your repo to Netlify

thanks for bearing with me!

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11

Thanks for sharing your experience @jamesd1!