But then it will be out-of-date from the repository version of the Views if they have been edited by developers. How can we manage this? Or should we never edit them in Umbraco?

I'd say never - especially if running on a later version as views should be compiled at build for speed. Maybe have them elaborate why they think they need to be able to edit views? If it is so insert bloat scripts then they could get a property in Umbraco for that instead.

disclaimer: I never built this originally 🙂 But they have compnents that they edit and re-order manually. So I said this was a bad idea and if we refactored to use blocklists for the components it would make more sense anyway. So I think you have answered my question

Give them access to your source control (provided you have automatic deployments). And make sure to charge at least double, when having to fix the stuff they break 🙂

probably get shot down here..(as shouldn't have CI/CD on a production slot) but we have in the past used an azure git enabled app service (local git option).. which means that change on the filesystem of the app service are tracked .. when you need to revisit the client code you can fetch down the repo from the app service and all their template changes are there as modified. Though this was pre netcore/compiled views etc... and blocklist/blockgrid seems the logical choice now. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1315976979375460382/1316015546264981586/choose-source.png?ex=6759827c&is=675830fc&hm=f141a329a0ab5b004bdc4835f5266d3339eadae3951072e963c716870d4cb49f&

We've had clients that were used to editing the views themselves. But now that we run Umbraco in Production runtime mode, it's not possible anymore. And I think that that's for the better. Views should be in source control. If the customer is a developer, they can work with the source code. Or they are not and they should give the task to us. Production runtime mode is more efficiënt and should be used where possible. BackofficeDevlopment in my opinion is only nice for quick prototyping and really simpel small sites where you don't want to use Visual Studio.

Views are only html so don't see why you need to be a developer to be comfortable editing, an editor should be perfectly happy with simple template changes. (even more friendly when using tag helpers) The beauty of having know Umbraco CMS from 4+ is that it catered for a wide variety of end clients with different needs/skills. I do think that recent movements towards the best practice commercial led (n tier, source controlled, ci/cd, and production mode) is removing some of what made UmbracoCMS a multi fit product. (for any budget)