If you're on a custom branch and want to go back to the master branch (e.g. because you want to update pihole) run the following command
pihole checkout master
If we want to switch to the dev branch (e.g. pihole checkout development), are settings/db's migrated? And, same for vice-versa (e.g. the dev branch breaks something), will switching back to master maintain settings/db for the downgrade? I am interested in running a secondary pihole on the dev branch to assist with testing, plus I enjoy new toys.
I'm also assuming since this is written in PHP, a "recompile" or the like doesn't happen or isn't required? Do you have any other pointers for running the development branch in order to keep things running smoothly?
Switching both direction preserves settings/database. But this might lead to issues from dev back to master if modifications on the dev branch where made to the database structure as they might be incompatible with the master branch. Last seen with the new/mac_clients branch where you had to delete one database if you would go back to master (I think it was pihole-ftl.db, but not sure anymore).
No, do not assume or depend on anything after pihole checkout to work. There's a reason that command prints out a large warning, development branches are not stable.
Dev -> master is incompatible, now. I learned the hard way! But I'm none too precious about my stats, I barely refer to them