Salesforce DX is the latest in the Salesforce product line available at App cloud, which allows developers to better manage app development throughout its entire lifecycle in an efficient manner. Salesforce DX also effectively facilitates the way how developers build and manage the Salesforce apps, and this platform is also built with an objective of enhancing the productivity level of developers with better control and enhanced collaboration.
The previous Salesforce platform hasn’t had a version control system, and DX has it as a major feature. With this add-on feature, developers can better manage the testing and auditing of their dev projects much efficiently. To do this well, it is essential for DX users to have a better understanding of the related terminology and technologies. Let’s discuss these in details here.
1. Dev Hub
While installing the SFDX CLI (command line interface) and run DX commands, developers have to authenticate it to Dev Hub. This creates a more manageable environment which is called Scratch Org. Dev Hub can be instantly turned on from Production org. However the changes can’t be undone. Dev Hub capabilities will let you create corresponding user records with specific permission sets to the team members.
The scratch orgs is created and managed by DevHub. You can process the bulk of your development in Scratch orgs for a temporary basis. To start with scratch orgs dev hub is used to function with it.
2. Scratch Orgs
Scratch org is another frequent thing developers come across Salesforce DX development, which is a disposable, source-driven code deployment and metadata. Flosum.com points out that it is custom configurable, the developers can easily emulate various editions of Salesforce by selecting the necessary features for a project. Scratch org files can be easily shared with the team also that all can access the same basic org for development. Scratch orgs are easy to create, run, and delete when finished.
A scratch org provides you dedicated, short time, configurable Salesforce environment. During the process of development Salesforce orgs improve developer productivity and collaboration, and also offers automated testing and continuous integration. To access your scratch org without logging in you can use CLI or Salesforce Extensions for VS Code.
3. Managed Packaging
At Salesforce DX, it is much easier to organize the metadata and further distribute apps through a CLI-centric approach. It is also easy to manage and automate the application lifecycle. The Managed Packaging feature of Salesforce DX offers an organizational system for the metadata along with distribution system for the applications. Salesforce Dx had come with the feature of managing package .this can be processed in packaging org and the activity like retrieve package, unzip it for a local project and convert it to the source format
4. File-based Configuration
Salesforce DX uses an executable command as “sfdx” for the CLI. In fact, SFDX CLI is not limited to its usage in Salesforce DX projects only. This CLI allows the developers to run many other tasks too across any sort of an Org. For most of the Salesforce DX tasks, Salesforce command-line interface (CLI) is used. Task like authorizing a Dev Hub org, scratch org and running various tests. We can also set the configuration values of the current project or for all the other projects.
5. Development optimization
Salesforce DX now has got a lot of new things to offer. Its unique set of tooling is meant to support more types of metadata and also offer a great level of interface for better development experience. These tools are open and available more to the community. Developers can adopt the whole or any part of this technology, and there are also tools to optimize the process of app development at each stage.
The open and standard tools of Salesforce DX include, but not limited to VS Code, Git, Eclipse, and Selenium among others. It is possible for the developers to build around the command-line interface and various open APIs. Salesforce DX also offers the flexibility build with a variety of tools based on the open source standards.
