It’s been a while since the new salesforce development life cycle paradigm has been around and there are tons of reasons to start using it in your salesforce projects. If you’re not sure about Salesforce DX yet or you are still questioning why should you start using it now, here are 3 of the things I love the most about it and you may also like once you get your hands dirty with it.
It comes with a CLI
No matter if it’s just you hacking around or it’s an automated script running your CD/CI pipeline, the Salesforce CLI gives you everything you need to interact with the metadata (and data too!) of your org. Because you authenticate against your Dev Hub you can spin a new environment in seconds, deploy a snapshot of your app and load some test data while your coffee is still hot.
It’s Source Control friendly
Although many of us have used source control (e.g. git) to manage versions of our code and configurations in the classic Metadata API, the SalesforceDX project structure reorganize your project files in a way that is easy to check in changes (E.g. CustomFields now have their own file, separate from the CustomObject file) and to modularize and deploy your app (or only some of its components) to any environment.
Did I mention scratch orgs?
One of the coolest features of Salesforce DX is the ability to easily create and destroy salesforce environments. Scratch orgs are short-lived environments that serve a single purpose like troubleshooting a production bug in isolation or build a new feature on top of any version of your application. Their isolation and how fast and easy they are to create is why so many of us like Salesforce DX so much.
What is the Salesforce DX feature that you find the most interesting? It should be more complicated now to find excuses to convert your old Metadata API salesforce project into SalesforceDX. Happy sfdx-ing!
Angel Abrego 