[SalesForce] Switching to Partner Developer Edition from Individual Developer Edition for App Exchange publishing

I have a managed package that is being actively developed in an Individual Developer Edition org. It has been installed and is in use in a couple of customer orgs already.

I would now like to move towards an app exchange listing. Via the ISV Partner Program Partner Portal I can generate a Partner Developer Edition org.

The Partner Developer Edition org seems like a better place to actively develop the managed package. It will be tied in with the Partner Portal and the CRM ISV Organization (Business Org) that will have the License Management App (LMA) installed.

Should I try and transition the managed package development into the Partner Developer Edition org?

Is this even possible, or will I lose the current namespace prefix and need to start a new managed package?

Starting a new managed package would be a pain as the existing customers would need to be migrated to the separate managed package.

Maybe the best I can do is link the existing Developer Edition org to the AppExchange Publishing Organization (APO) org.


From Partner Development & Test Environments:

Can I upgrade my existing DE org to Partner Developer Edition?
No, Partner Developer Edition is a brand new 20-user DE org. If you want
to migrate your work from DE to Partner Developer Edition, you will
need to use the Force.com IDE or Packaging.
acceptance of our agreement, which outlines these orgs are NOT for
production use.

Best Answer

I think your best bet is to stay with the current location and link the existing org. As you point out you will loose upgradability for your existing customers. And migrating them will involve (depending on the number of custom objects and dependencies they have elsewhere in their orgs) quite complex and not great from a customer perspective.

In reality while you get 20 users, having 20 developers developing in one org is not really practical. One factor is the daily API usage starts to burn a lot more quickly. Once you get above 1 or 2 and/or more complex code base and multiple releases you probably need to move out all together and into a more source control centered solution. Using your packaging org mainly as a release tool at that point.

Finally if there are aspects of the Partner DE orgs you want in your existing org, you will most likely be able to get SF support to match them if you ask. Unless there is some aspect I'm not aware, there is not a great deal of difference.

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