Custom field created via Studio not showing on remote server (SuiteCRM 8.9)

👨‍💻 Development Help
1

Hi,

I’m running SuiteCRM 8.9 and I have an issue with a custom field created via Studio that works on one server but not on another.

Setup:

  • Server A (dev): field created via Studio → works perfectly
  • Server B (production): field deployed via git → not showing

What I did:

  1. Created a custom field customer_segment_c (dropdown) in the Leads module via Studio on Server A
  2. Committed the generated files to git and deployed to Server B
  3. Ran Quick Repair and Rebuild on Server B → field still not showing

What I noticed:
In SuiteCRM 8.9, Studio only generates override_sugarfield*.php files — no full field definition PHP file is created. The field definition seems to be stored only in the fields_meta_data database table, which means deploying files via git is not enough to replicate the field on
another server.

Questions:

  • Is this the expected behavior in SuiteCRM 8.9? Has Studio stopped generating PHP definition files?
  • What is the recommended workflow to deploy Studio-created fields across multiple servers without recreating them manually via Studio on each server?
  • Is there a way to export/import fields_meta_data entries, or generate a deployable vardef file from an existing field?

Thanks in advance.

2

When a custom field is created through Studio, SuiteCRM stores its definition in the fields_meta_data table in the database. If the record for that field does not exist in the target environment (e.g., production), the field will not appear even if the code files are deployed.

To fix this:

  1. Go to the source environment (where the field exists).

  2. Export the field definition from the fields_meta_data table.

  3. and execute it on the production database.

  4. Go to Admin → Repair → Quick Repair and Rebuild.

  5. Scroll to the bottom and execute the SQL query generated by the repair to create/update the column in the module’s _cstm table.

After this, the field should appear correctly in Studio and the module layouts.