The latest release of the Salesforce Extensions for VS Code and the Salesforce CLI added a preview of basic support for developing against non-scratch orgs. This means you can now use VS Code with your package.xml file against Scratch Orgs, Developer Edition Orgs, etc.
You will need to install the preview release of the Salesforce CLI and enable the preview features in VS Code. You can do this by running the following commands:
sfdx plugins:install salesforcedx@pre-release
Next you need to enable the feature in VS Code.
To open your user and workspace settings, use the following VS Code menu command:
- On Windows/Linux - File > Preferences > Settings
- On macOS - Code > Preferences > Settings
Set the following setting in your user settings:
"salesforcedx-vscode-core.change_set_based_tools.enabled": true
Close and open VS Code and create a project.
To create a project with a manifest run from the command palette:
SFDX: Create Project with Manifest
Alternatively, you can use the CLI to create the project:
sfdx force:project:create --projectname myproject --manifest
cd mychangeset
code .
Change a setting to force the commands to work against API version 43:
sfdx force:config:set apiVersion=43.0
If you want to connect to a sandbox org, edit file:
sfdx-project.json
Set sfdcLoginUrl to:
https://test.salesforce.com
Authorize the org via the command palette:
SFDX: Authorize an Org
The new project you created came with a default manifest file located at:
manifest/package.xml
Right-click this file and select the command
SFDX: Retrieve Source from Org
Reference: