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Did you realize development in the Salesforce ecosystem is easy nowadays? Well, all the credit for this revolution goes to Salesforce DX (Developer Experience). It helps the developers manage and deploy Salesforce applications by providing several tools and features to support source-driven development. Before Salesforce DX, deploying Salesforce involved configuring an organization and creating Apex and Visualforce code using the Force.com IDE or the online IDE provided by the Developer Console on Salesforce.
Salesforce DX is an advanced suite of developer tools, APIs, and features designed to simplify the development process for creating apps on the Salesforce platform. Salesforce DX makes it much easier for Salesforce teams to implement DevOps helps to simplify code management, and increases confidence after deployment. The modern approach of DevOps also allows you to deliver apps to market faster by leveraging industry-standard models.
What is Salesforce DX?
Salesforce DX offers Salesforce developers a variety of command-line services and tools for managing source code, securely syncing it to scratch orgs for testing, and packaging it for deployment to production Salesforce org. Some important DX features and capabilities include the Salesforce CLI, second-generation packaging, scratch orgs, Visual Studio Code extensions, version control integration, and much more.
From the above mentioned definition, it is clear that DX features offer great help to developers. So, let’s check out the benefits of this toolkit.
Benefits of Salesforce DX
There are numerous benefits of using SFDX, as mentioned below.
- Salesforce DX is an open, easy, collaborative and integrated software development in the Salesforce ecosystem. This toolset helps achieve top-notch performance and create an agile development environment. It supports end-to-end and integrated SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) for the development teams.
- Salesforce Developer Experience focuses on package-based, source-driven development. This means that it switches the source of truth from the organization to a version control system (VCS), such as Git repository. The tools of SFDX help developers to easily apply version control during development, improving visibility and maintaining code integrity.
- By using this toolkit, developers can also use the DevOps approach to speed up the development process and enhance the final product quality. The approach of Salesforce DevOps allows an automated testing process which is helpful to save time and release products with CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Development).
- SFDX also helps the organization and development team to handle the dependencies between metadata. Thus, running a query on API will disclose which components refer to other components. It also simplifies the development process by reducing the chances of coding errors.
Features and Tools of Salesforce DX
There are several tools and features of the Salesforce DX project that you can use for development purposes. These tools, APIs, and features are designed to work collaboratively and aim to facilitate a source-driven, package-based development and release process. The evolution of these Salesforce DX features has multiple advantages. The list of these useful features and tools is as follows.
Git and GitHub
SFDX moves the point of truth to a Version Control System(VCS). GitHub is one of the most popular VCS in use today. It can easily interact with SFDX to help streamline the entire software development life cycle process. It supports Git repositories, which manage version control, and includes a variety of services that help developers interact while applying and testing code changes.
GitHub provides an open and single source of truth for all collaborative work, ensuring everybody works in a transparent environment while maintaining code integrity. It additionally supports CI/CD integrations, which enable to test, develop, and deploy software projects using specifications saved in the repository. These integrations accelerate development while reducing the need for manual testing.
Salesforce CLI
Salesforce CLI is the frequently used tool in the Salesforce DX environment. This tool holds great importance because it provides the text based interface that allows developers to create directories, execute scripts and to make interaction with other tools in order to build the CI integrations or source driven applications.
Salesforce CLI is built around the open API and it can be integrated into any developer workflow for performing multiple types of the complex actions. It also has an additional feature to get customized with packages and plugins to make a customized development workspace.
Scratch Orgs
In Salesforce DX, a scratch org is a source-driven, fully customizable, disposable environment for development and automated testing. This environment allows development teams to duplicate a Salesforce organization with varying features and preferences. Scratch orgs are transient and can be created from scratch, deleted, or let expire when no longer needed or the expiry duration(maximum of 30 days) is up.
To build and administer scratch orgs, developers must first enable a permanent org as a DevHub. When creating a new scratch org (which may be done via the CLI or within the UI of a DevOps system), developers can choose the lifespan, shape, and enabled features.
Second-Generation Packaging
Packaging allows developers to distribute their developed app to end customers or users. It involves organizing metadata to prevent the creation of an unstructured org, making it easier to manage. The metadata and Salesforce components are grouped into logical units and hosted in Salesforce AppExchange.
This practice makes version control the single source of truth and enables developers to use the packaged components to create apps. Additionally, developers can create unlocked packages in the organization’s DevHub and set up a sandbox to install the packages and versions of the developed application.
VSC and IDE
Visual Studio Code(VSC) is an integrated development environment (IDE) that includes a code editor, build automation tools, a debugger, and intelligent code completion features. This lightweight, versatile IDE is ideal for working with SFDX. It also supports the usage of open APIs for integration with SFDX. The Salesforce Extension bundle includes programming tools on Salesforce platform while using the VS Code editor.
Developers can deal with files more readily with this IDE because of the updated metadata format. This new format divides complex metadata types into digestible subcomponents, decreasing the possibility of merge conflicts, which can impede development and produce mistakes when merging code changes.
Salesforce DX and DevOps
Salesforce DX alone may not provide all the necessary tools for a complete Salesforce DevOps process. To achieve a mature and robust DevOps process, Salesforce teams require tools for version control, continuous integration, test automation, and backups. However, Salesforce DX has significantly simplified the adoption of version control and source-driven processes for Salesforce teams, thus contributing to the growing popularity of Salesforce DevOps.
Version Control and Source-Driven Development
Embracing version control is a crucial step towards DevOps maturity. Without version control, teammates working in separate developer orgs or the same sandbox may inadvertently overwrite or disrupt each other’s work, leading to confusion and additional work. This issue is pertinent for both small and large teams. Implementing version control resolves this problem, and developers expect to use it for Salesforce development. Despite the challenges due to Salesforce’s original design not being source-driven, the release of DX has promoted version control, encouraging source-driven development with the main branch of the Git repository as the source of truth rather than the Production org.
Continuous Integration and Automated Workflows
Efficiently automated processes for testing, releases, and backups are the ultimate goal for teams implementing DevOps. Once teams have established fast, reliable deployments and have adopted version control, they can begin to introduce automation into their release pipeline. Moving towards CI/CD is more likely to succeed with smaller, more frequent releases.
In Light of These Facts
Lastly, it is prominent to say that Salesforce DX is the game changer for Salesforce development because it offers tools and features that improve version control, enhance collaboration and smooth out the development lifecycle. By using Salesforce DX in the workflow, you can get better code quality, effective deployments and faster development process.
If you have just started your development journey in the Salesforce ecosystem, it would be better for you to use the Salesforce DX toolkit to build and deploy the Salesforce applications. We hope you loved our Salesforce DX developer guide. If you have any queries related to this topic, you can contact our experts.
