Flowline 0.8.0

Flowline

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Flowline is a Dataverse ALM CLI — structured workflow, Git-tracked solutions, and a fast push to DEV without the enterprise overhead.

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PAC CLI gives you the primitives — Flowline gives you the workflow.

A professional Git-based workflow for plugin developers and solution architects, without the overhead of Power Platform Pipelines or managed solutions. clone → push → sync → deploy, from the inner dev loop to production, in one tool.

Where PAC CLI already handles it, Flowline wraps — it doesn't re-implement. Where PAC has no answer, Flowline fills the gap.

Familiar with spkl? Flowline is its actively maintained successor (last meaningful commit 2021).

What sets Flowline apart:

• Attribute-driven plugin registration — decorate your IPlugin classes with [Step], [Filter], [CustomApi]; Flowline reads the assembly and handles every Dataverse registration. No Plugin Registration Tool, no spkl.json, no boilerplate.
• Web resource dependencies auto-wired — RESX files linked to parent JS by base name; // flowline:depends for JS-to-JS; registered on every push. No Maker Portal visits, no manual dependency trees.
• Orphan cleanup built in — steps, step images, and web resources missing from source are deleted from Dataverse on every push. deploy cleans up removed solution components too. No stale registrations, no ghost records. Use --no-delete to opt out.
• AI-native schema context — sync writes DATAVERSE_CONTEXT.md with your full schema (entities, attributes, option sets, forms, views, plugin steps); Claude Code, Copilot, and Codex load it automatically via AGENTS.md. Your AI assistant knows your field names without live queries.
• Human-readable sync summary — sync translates the XML diff into plain language: what changed, what was added, what was removed — attribute-level detail included. You know exactly what happened before you commit.
• Scaffolded WebResources project — clone creates a TypeScript + Rollup project wired to push from day one. No boilerplate, no manual configuration. Swap in any bundler you prefer.
• Dry-run before you touch anything — --dry-run shows exactly what would change before a single Dataverse record is touched. Run it as a CI safety gate or any time you want confidence. No other Dataverse ALM tool offers this.
• Zero-friction auth — reuses the PAC CLI profiles you already have. Switch environments by switching profiles. Works in CI with service principals out of the box.
• One-command environment provisioning — provision copies PROD to a fresh DEV or TEST environment. No admin center clicks, no configuration drift.

Pipelines are buried steel — permits, compressors, years to commission. A flowline goes where the pipeline can't.

Install

dotnet tool install --global Flowline

Prerequisites: .NET SDK (8 or later), Git, and PAC CLI:

dotnet tool install --global Microsoft.PowerApps.CLI.Tool

If .NET 10 is installed, Flowline uses dnx — no separate PAC CLI install needed.

Authenticate before using Flowline:

pac auth create --environment https://your-org.crm4.dynamics.com

Quick start

# Bootstrap an existing solution into the repo
flowline clone ContosoSales --prod https://contoso.crm4.dynamics.com

# Daily dev loop
flowline push
flowline sync
git commit -m "feat: add validation"

# Promote
flowline deploy test
flowline deploy prod

For full setup, auth, and project workflow: Getting Started

Commands

Plugin attributes NuGet: Flowline.Attributes — add to your plugin project to use [Step], [Filter], [CustomApi], and friends — full reference: Plugin Registration

See the Wiki for the full documentation.

Coming from another tool? Migration from spkl · Migration from Daxif · Migration from PACX