I think in my ideal world, I would be able to make my own branch for my modifications, make changes, then commit them to the server when ready (thus deleting the branch). But if I want to be able to do that, I think we need to aim for a single-user environment, which means some sort of IRIS instance on my machine, or a dedicated environment just for my new branch on the server (as you suggested), although I don't quite understand how that would work.

This process is exactly what I was suggesting. Each developer gets their own IRIS, like they have their own copy of the code in the dedicated branch for the feature. Think of IRIS as the SDK, like the JDK for Java or Node.js for JavaScript. Your setup is complex, but if you have a process to set up your shared dev server then you can have the devs run that to set up their own servers. If developers won't be running tests that require the full setup, then the instance setup becomes even simpler. You can then have a CI/CD pipeline in your git provider that moves code to the shared test instance when it's committed to the main develop branch. With a setup like this, you can have as many devs working on as many projects as you like without them blocking each other. Any conflicts between changes will be resolved when the devs submit their code for a merge/pull request on your main branch.

Hi @Michael Derr, I recommend you have an isolated dev environment for each branch, whether that be a whole server or just a namespace. You can have Embedded Git configured to a different branch in each environment. Developers would then work in the environment that corresponds to the branch. This can be achieved with only server-side source control, but it also sets you up nicely to move to local source control in the future if that's a goal. 

@Tobias Krause You need to have a workspace folder with an active server connection to the same server and namespace that you are trying to export from. These checks are there to prevent you accidentally syncing the exported files with a different server or namespace.