Feature Request: Detect Added, Modified, and Deleted Metadata via CLI (Similar to Gearset/Copado)

[pranayjswl007]

Gearset and Copado provide a visual interface that clearly shows newly added, modified, and deleted metadata components between the local project and a Salesforce org. This is extremely helpful for keeping version control clean and in sync with org changes, especially in admin-driven environments.

Use Case:
As an admin or developer, I frequently need to pull changes made directly in the org — such as updates to Permission Sets, Layouts, or FlexiPages. I want to:

Pull down metadata only if it has changed

Currently, using commands like sfdx force:source:pull or sfdx force:source:retrieve, there is no indication when metadata has been deleted in the org. The command simply returns nothing, making it difficult to identify and clean up stale files in the local repo.

Feature Request:
It would be extremely helpful to have a CLI-based feature that can:

Compare metadata between the local project and a target org

Clearly report what has been added, changed, or deleted

[nvuillam]

@pranayjswl007 first, thank you for comparing us to Gearset and Copado, these are big companies with big R&D teams, while sfdx-hardis is just an open-source tool supported by Cloudity and some passionate contributors :)

About comparing local metadata vs target org, there is indeed nothing as advanced as the shiny third party vendor tools UIs, but that doesn't mean there are not some ways to work anyway :)

Official Salesforce Extension

When you install VsCode Salesforce Extension Pack, you have an embedded extension "Org differences"

If you right click on a folder and select "Diff Folder against org", you'll see the results in this extension (you might need to activate "Detect conflicts at sync" setting)

But i'm not a big fan of the result, as it is not ordered by metadata type :/

Using Pull

When working on a dev org, it is a good practice to frequently pull and commit your updates (don't work in an org during 1 week before pulling and committing. It is perfectly fine to have multiple commits in a feature branch.

Pull command will retrieve all updated items in the org, sometimes including the deletions

Example: Record Type below

It's true that it's not a 100% sure way, but deleting metadatas is not a common action, so in that case , just delete the files within VsCode, then commit, then run "Save / Publish my current task", and sfdx-hardis will automatically:

• Remove deleted metadatas from package.xml
• Add deleted metadatas in destructiveChanges.xml

Then, when the PR will be merged, the deletions will be applied during deployments, including at upper levels in your Pipeline

Using Monitoring

This might be a little bit too heavy for dev sandboxes, but for higher levels like UAT, preprod and production, you might want to see if you have silly team mates who updates metadatas directly on the org, without going through a CI/CD deployment

In that case, it is recommended to install sfdx-hardis monitoring repository. It will backup all metadatas every night, so if you open both CI/CD repo and Monitoring repo in the same Git IDE, you'll be able to compare source branches and backup branches using git, and that will show you the diff.

Having Slack/Teams notifications about direct updates in orgs not performed by the release manager will also help :)

Setup info for monitoring is here -> https://sfdx-hardis.cloudity.com/salesforce-monitoring-home/

[pranayjswl007]

@nvuillam This is quite good. I realized sf-hardis is a web app. Hopefully, in the future, we can add a code-diff UI. The way git works with file hashes, hopefully, we could make a similar UI.

I was talking to a couple of colleagues, they mentioned something like

1. Create a branch from main
2. Delete the force-app folder
3. Make SF-Hardis pull full metadata from prod/sandbox
4. It would only fetch metadata that is present in the org
5. Deleted metadata/files would be shown in git status.
6. commit

I would try something on these lines..

[nvuillam]

@pranayjswl007 sfdx-hardis is a CLI + a VsCode extension, and indeed with the VsCode extension framework it is possible to create WebViews , so technically we could display such result, as soon as we really know what we want to display :)

https://code.visualstudio.com/api/extension-guides/webview

To compare the local source packages and the remote orgs, it could be done using the some pattern like:

• Generate manifests (package.xml) for all local packages found in local sources (listed in sfdx-project.json). Append them to get a single LOCAL_METADATAS

• Generate manifest of remote org so we get REMOTE_METADATAS (then maybe filter to remove standard metadatas)

• Compare lists LOCAL_METADATAS & REMOTE_METADATAS: this will give the metadatas that have been added/removed, + the list of metadatas that are in common

• Create a new local git repo & a new SF project in a temp folder

• Copy local sources in this temp folder, commit them in a branch named "local"

• Retrieve REMOTE_METADATAS into the temp folder, commit in a branch named "remote"

• Git diff between local and remote branch in the temp repo, to get the differences

Now we have added & removed metadatas + differences between common metadatas

• Create a WebView that correctly displays such result
  • when selecting a file, get the diff from the temporary repo using git :)

I have a big open-source backlog, but if you know someone that would like to try to implement that, I'll provide support :)

[pranayjswl007]

Thanks @nvuillam . Would try to contibute to this. Much appreciated :)

[nvuillam]

@pranayjswl007 i could handle the part until git diff without struggling too much with helpers already existing in sfdx-hardis
But i kind of hate doing front-end... are you good in web dev ?
If so we could split the task, i generate the data ... then i you handle the webview ^^