What is Salesforce Developer Experience (Salesforce DX)? | Definition from TechTarget
Salesforce Developer Experience (Salesforce DX) is a set of software development tools that lets developers build, test and ship many kinds of applications on Salesforce Platform (formerly called Force.com). Development team members can also collaborate using Salesforce DX and follow Agile development principles to deliver high-quality products continuously.
Salesforce DX is a set of low-code software development tools for Salesforce Platform, including the following:
- Version control system (VCS) integration.
- Command-line interface (CLI) tools.
- Visual Studio Code extension.
- Code Builder web-based development environment.
- Lightning Web Components developer tools.
The tool set is open and flexible, so anyone can use it to develop applications for Salesforce Platform. The platform itself is low code, so it’s easy to adopt and use. It also helps accelerate development and release cycles using Salesforce DX tools.
Salesforce Platform and Salesforce DX tools also support DevOps processes and provide secure test environments. This helps developers quickly develop and confidently test a wide range of new applications. Many Salesforce partners have built DX functionality into their own DevOps products, making DX workflows widely available to Salesforce developers.
Salesforce DX is intended for advanced developers who want more control and features during a development project. Salesforce also offers low-code/no-code tools, like App Builder and the Lightning platform.
Benefits of Salesforce DX
The unique selling point of Salesforce DX is that it enables easy, open, integrated and collaborative software development on Salesforce Platform. The tool set is ideal for high-performance Agile development environments. It supports an integrated, end-to-end software development lifecycle (SDLC) for individual developers and development teams.
Salesforce DX is all about package-based, source-driven development. This means that it shifts the source of truth from the organization to a VCS, such as the Git repository. Dev teams can easily implement version control during development using Salesforce DX tools to get more visibility into code changes and maintain integrity.
Developers can also adopt the DevOps approach to speed up development and improve the quality of the final product. This approach enables automated testing processes to save time and more frequent releases with continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD).
Another benefit of Salesforce DX is that it lets teams and organizations organize their metadata and distribute apps using a source-driven, CLI-centric approach. This same approach also lets them automate and easily manage the end-to-end SDLC.
Finally, Salesforce DX provides a dependency application programming interface (API) that enables dev teams to understand and handle the dependencies between metadata. Running a query on the API reveals which components reference other components, simplifying development and reducing the possibility of coding errors.
Main tools in Salesforce DX
Salesforce DX includes many user-friendly development tools, including the following:
- Git and GitHub. Salesforce DX shifts the source of truth to a VCS. One of the most popular VCSes in use today is GitHub. GitHub can easily integrate with Salesforce DX to help streamline the entire SDLC. It hosts Git repositories, which handle version control, and provides numerous features that help dev team members collaborate as they apply and test code changes.
GitHub provides an accessible and single source of truth for all shared work, ensuring that everyone works in a transparent environment where code integrity is maintained. In addition, it supports CI/CD integrations to test, build and deploy software projects based on specifications stored in the repository. These integrations help accelerate development and minimize the need for manual testing.
- Salesforce CLI. A frequently used tool in Salesforce DX is Salesforce CLI. This tool provides a text-based interface that lets developers execute scripts, create directories and interact with other tools to build source-driven applications or integrations.
Salesforce CLI provides a quick and powerful method for developers to make changes to the organization and interact with the applications. It is also used by automation tools to push changes and enable CI/CD processes.
Salesforce CLI is built around open APIs and can be easily integrated into any developer workflow to perform many types of complex actions. It can also be customized with plugins and packages to create a tailored development workspace.
- Salesforce DevOps Center. Salesforce DevOps Center is a graphical user interface for the Salesforce DX platform. It can be used in place of Salesforce CLI for administrative tasks.
- Scratch orgs. In Salesforce DX, a scratch org is a source-driven, fully configurable, disposable environment for development and automated testing. Dev teams can use this environment to emulate a Salesforce org with different features and preferences. Scratch orgs are also temporary, meaning they can be created from scratch — hence the name — and deleted or allowed to expire when no longer required. That said, developers must enable a permanent org as a Dev Hub to create and manage scratch orgs. When spinning up a new scratch org, which can be done from Salesforce CLI or from inside the UI of a DevOps application, developers have the flexibility to specify its life span, shape and enabled features.
- Sandboxes. In Salesforce DX, a sandbox org is a long-lived development organization. It more closely mimics the production organization. It may be used for employee training or user validation.
Visual Studio Code and integrated development environment
Visual Studio Code (VS Code) provides a comprehensive and user-friendly integrated development environment with a code editor, build automation tools, a debugger and intelligent code completion capabilities. The lightweight, extensible IDE is ideal for working with Salesforce DX. Open APIs can be used to integrate the IDE with Salesforce DX. The tools for developing on Salesforce Platform in the VS Code editor are part of the Salesforce Extension Pack.
It’s easy for developers to work with files in the IDE due to an improved metadata format. With this new format, complex metadata types are broken down into manageable subcomponents. It also reduces the likelihood of merge conflicts that can slow down development and introduce errors when incorporating code changes.
Salesforce Code Builder
Salesforce Code Builder is an entire IDE in a web browser. It offers the same functionality as VS Code with the Salesforce extension. It enables new developers to quickly and easily start development. It also automatically saves the current state, so no work is lost. It can be used to work on the main Salesforce languages and includes a debugger.
Second-generation packaging in Salesforce DX
Packaging provides developers with a way to distribute a developed app to customers or end users. It enables the packaging of metadata, a process that prevents the creation of an unstructured org that is difficult to manage. The metadata and Salesforce components are packaged together into logical units and hosted in Salesforce AppExchange. This makes version control the only source of truth and enables developers to use the packaged components to create apps. Developers can also create unlocked packages in the organization’s Dev Hub, as well as set up a sandbox to install the packages and versions of the developed application.
Einstein for developers
Salesforce Einstein integrates with Salesforce DX. It can currently provide code generation, autocompletion and test-case development to a developer. It is available in the Salesforce VS Code extension and is based on the open CodeGen large language model.
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