Does anyone experiment in creating salesforce Package.xml automatically for continuous integration? If there any script or some idea please share.
You know incremental package.xml helps to deploy only the modified files rather than using complete package.xml that redeploy unmodified files as well which takes a lot of time.
Thanks in advance!
Tricky. And not really a programming-related problem, consider cross-posting this to https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/ or maybe even https://devops.stackexchange.com/
I don't think there's no clear answer, you'll have to experiment. Especially that you tagged "migration tool" (so old-school, battle-tested but lower priority Metadata API; seems that all focus is now on SFDX style of deployments). Do you use any version control (ideally Git) or do you hope to somehow compare source & target org, figure out the deltas and deploy only them?
Remember that often SF gets better at detecting "no changes" with every release (how old is your migration tool's jar file?). For example when I deploy my current project to an empty sandbox (exact copy of prod, no custom objects, code etc yet) the initial deploy takes ~7 minutes. But any subsequent deploy with same content or slight changes takes just 3-4. So try to calculate time lost in the grand scheme of things and decide what gains you want to see / how much time you want to spend on experimenting and tweaking the solution.
You could look into dedicated deployment solutions such as Gearset, Autorabit, Odaseva (I'm not affiliated with either and this list is not exhaustive). They often are capable of running a comparison for you.
There are several projects that try to compose package.xml based on Git diff(erence) between two commits. Of course you need to have a repo first and some regime:
https://github.com/cloudsandbox/sfdx-gen-pack saw presentation about it at Cloudforce London 2019
https://github.com/Accenture/sfpowerkit seems to have a "diff" command (disclaimer: I used to work for Accenture but not affiliated now, haven't worked on the tool, haven't used it personally)
https://cumulusci.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ this seems to be interesting and mature. Built by SF employees, not an official tool but used to CI deploy the non-profit packages they build (maybe you heard about Non Profit Starter Pack, especially if you ever considered enabling Person Accounts). I'm not sure if they do delta deployments as such but there seems to be a command that updates package.xml with files in repository so it's a start? https://cumulusci.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorial.html#part-4-running-tasks
I'm not saying CumulusCI will be a silver bullet but out of these 3 seems to be most actively maintained ;) But sounds like you'd have to get familiar with SFDX (if not whole thing then at least commands to convert the project back and forth between "source" (SFDX) structure and Metadata API structure
Answering my question by myself: I found git diff master feature/vat | force-dev-tool changeset create vat working!
Thanks to Roman answered in https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/184332/is-there-a-pre-build-solution-for-generating-a-package-xml-from-a-git-repo
Related
Question is plain and simple:
I want to publish my latest version to selected users for beta testing. Is there any quick and dirty way to do the same.
Here is the link that I found in MSDN which is bit old and suggesting an approach but I dont think i need to put this much effort. Rather I will just use a different installer for beta testing.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480721.aspx[^]
I think you should create a new site with a different publish URL. It is the most manageable option I can think of. Users connect to that site and download the beta version and could run it in parallel with another version for comparison purposes.
You are going to have two versions of the client application so you are going to have two installers; I don't think you can get around that. Having multiple publish URLs means people don't have to uninstall/re-install the app to get the "right version".
Embrace MAGE and script it out.
I'm trying to figure out the best way to backup all of our Salesforce metadata in our full sandbox.
We've had a large team working on numerous areas of Salesforce (configuration and development) and we've promoted all that code to our full sandbox. Before moving to production, we want to backup all the metadata. We are not concerned about actual data. We just want to make sure we backup all the metadata in our full sandbox, then promote to our production instance and finally do a refresh of our full sandbox.
We thought about using a change set, but that would be horribly tedious, time-consuming and would it indeed grab all metadata.
Would creating an unmanaged package be an option? I've never done anything with packages, so I'm in the dark on that process. Would it be easy to grab all the metadata?
I've read about options using the ANT Tool, which I have no experience using and it seems to be a little tricky to setup and configure.
I use Eclipse regularly, I don't believe Eclipse can grab all the metadata (approval processes, etc.)?
Any insight and help on solving this would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
I'd like to suggest using a version control. It's the best way for managing all changes into your project, store history of changes and comfortable team work. I prefer git but you can select any other.
For managing changes which can't be retrieved via Eclipse/ant migration tool or any other tool I use file named "NonMetaDataChanges" which stores all configuration steps which should be performed on fresh org for setup application before and after deployment of metadata. usually these manual changes takes no more than half a hour.
Also I've just checked that Approval Process can be retrieved via Eclipse.
Isn't the easiest way to create a metadata backup to create or refresh a sandbox? Other than custom settings, what will it miss? With the sandbox change-sets could be create to return production to a happier place.
The best path, I agree, is to put all changes under version control. But until all metadata can be extracted and re-imported, some kind of all-of-the-above approach must do.
So I'm starting a web project from scratch on PHP/Zend Framework/SVN, and want to start it very structured. I know all about SVN branching, having a development branch, hot fix branch etc. (well at least I think I do).
My question is what's the best method to release new version of my software in the future, instead of just doing an svn update. For ex. deploy the new version to a test server for staging before releasing to production and such sort of things. Any thoughts?
As step 1, I wouldn't use a tool built to manage source code versioning for deployment, I'd recommend a tool that can manage/deploy releases for that purpose :)
I am a support analyst for BuildMaster, a tool which does exactly what you need (and it's free for you if you have a team of <= 5 people).
It really depends how your infrastructure looks like. If you are deploying to a lot of nodes I think using BitTorrent is a good choice
This is a subject of common discussion, but through all my research I have not actually found a sound answer to this.
I develop my websites offline, and then launch them live through my hosting account.
I utilize codeigniter, and on that basis there are some fundamental differences between my offline and online copies, namely base urls and database configurations. As such I cannot simply develop and test my websites offline and then upload them as it requires small configuration changes which are easy to overlook and good lead to a none working live website.
The other factor is that when I am developing offline, I might add a database table or a column whilst creating some functionality. When I upload my local developments to my host, they often do not work as I have forgotten to upload the new database structure. Obviously this cannot happen - there cannot be any opportunity for a damaged or broken live website.
Further to this, I'd like to be able to have logs of my development - version control of sorts such that if i develop a feature, and then something else stops working I can easily look backwards to at least see the code changes which could have caused the change.
My fourth requirement is as follows: if i go away on holiday for a week without my development laptop, and then get a bug report, I have no way of fixing it. If i fix it on the live copy, not only is it dangerous, but i'll inevitably not update it on my local copy - as such when i update my live copy next time, that change will be lost. Is there a way that on any computer i can access my development setup, edit and test, launch to the live site, whilst also committing it such that my laptop local copy is up to date.
So yes.. in general im looking for a solution to make my development processes more efficient/suitable. Any ideas?
Thanks
Don't deploy by simply copying. Deploy by using a script (I use Apache Ant) that will automate the copy of specific files for each environment, the replacement of some values, etc.
This just needs rigor. Make a todo list while developing, and check that every modification on the server is done. You might also test the deploy procedure on a pre-production server which has an similar configuration as the production server, make sure everything is OK, and then apply the same, tested procedure on the production server
Just use a version control system. SVN or Git are two free candidates.
Make your version control server available from anywhere. If it's an open-source project, free hosting solutions exist. Of course, if you don't have a development computer wvailable, you'll have to checkout the whole project, and probably install some tools to be able to develop, test and deploy. Just try to make it as easy as possible, or always have your laptop available. If you plan to work, have your toolbox with you. If you don't plan to work, then don't work. When you have finished some development, commit to the server. When you go back to your laptop, update your working copy from the server.
Small additions and clarifications to JB
Use any VCS, which can work (in a good way) with branches - your local and prod systems are good candidates for separate branches, where you share common code but have branch-specific config. It'll require some changes in your everyday workflow (code in "test", merge finished with "prod", deploy /by tools, not hand/ only after merge...), but it's fair price
Changing of workflow, again. As JB noted - don't deploy by hand, don't deploy wrong branch, don't deploy "prod" before finished merge. But now build-tools are rather smart, you can check such pre-condition inside builder
Just use VCS, maybe DVCS will be somehow better. I say strong "No-no" for Git as first VCS, but you have wide choice even without it - SVN (poor branch|merge comparing to DVCS), Bazaar (not a tool of my dream, but, who knows), Mercurial, Fossil SCM, Monotone
Don't work on live, never do anyting outside your SCM. One source of changes is a rule of happy developer. Or don't work at all at free-time, or have codebase always reacheable for you (free code-hosting /GoogleCode, SourceForge, BitBucket, Github, Assembla, LaunchPad/ or own server), get it as needed, change, save, deploy
I am currently investigating possible options of a migration framework/tool. I like the idea of ruby migrations on which the above frameworks are based.
So I am asking for your experience, opinions and maybe a comparison between them. Are you using them in production?
thanks for responses. The goal of this question was to get a feeling about which tools is used most in the developer community but it seems that migrations are not a hot topic here.
Anyway, I have decided to go with MigSharp as the codebase seem to be pretty clean and it is quite easy to handle and had build in support for MS SQL CE. Second runner up would have been FluentMigrator where I was not able to produce a working example for compact edition.
Cheers
I use FluentMigrator in production, and am a longtime contributor to FM. I think your question is to general; be more specific. Also, FM has a google group which is fairly active if you want FM information.
FM is derived from migrator.net, as I recall. It uses a fluent-syntax, and supports multiple databases. We have taken some inspiration from rails migrations, but it's definitely not a port. Worth checking out.
One thing I've learned is not to put your migrations in the same assembly as you app code. Separate them into a migration assembly, and use that for migrating your databases.
Also, you should always work on multiple environments to avoid problems with migrations run straight against production. I always have at least a development and production environment, and most of the time there is a testing environment as well.
I use mig#.
It works well, but you will need to have some guidelines for usage - as migrations can get complicated.
We use sequence number on the end of our migrations rather than a date-time stamp. This is because we don't know when the date time stamp was set (when they begun the source code change-set; just before committing; some time inbetween) different developers could use different approaches.
Names such as Migration_0000034.cs give you plenty of space.
At this point, I would stick with migrator.net. I like the promise of FluentMigrator, but it seems to not have any better active development than migrator.net (see the issues and pull requests that have languished on their github site).
There is also no easy way to do an ExecuteScalar(). I'd add it, but I don't want to create my own fork, and I see no reason that a pull request would actually land in the master. (Execute.WithConnection is an Action so it will fire on demand rather than when I need it to fire)
So for me, I'm heading back to migrator.net.