SFDX: retrieve Source from Org failing

Question

In order to connect my VSC to my org and pull my org's datas to VSC, I followed the steps this great video shows ;

In Visual Studio Code I : - SFDX: created project with Manifest - in the manifest -> package.xml, I replaced the code with the one I got using packagebuilder.herokuapp.com - SFDX: authorized (my) Org

Then, exactly as in the video (precisely there 10m10s), I access the button SFDX: retrieve Source from Org (cf screenshot) .

Then, it's working for several minutes, but finally fail explaining :

ERROR:  Expected metadata file at path: (+path)

I search for answers on the internet, after searching there in vain... Any idea how to solve this ?

Thanks !

Edit : also tried using the windows commandLine, same result :

I was looking at this topic. Sorry it didn't help..

Edit : I commented the concerned lines :

And know, I got much more topics to read, as this error seems more common.. But any help is always welcom !

After 8m30s of work, the new error is :

ERROR:  EISDIR: illegal operation on a directory, read.

EDIT ! Well, in fact I got some datas from the org ! But it seems that a lot is missing ... As I don't know which one are missing, and the others, it's not helpful.

Answer 1

I was having the same error for pull & retrieve requests. You need to uninstall Salesforce CLI and re-install it.

Answer 2

Please execute

sfdx force:mdapi:retrieve -r metadata -u <alias name> -k <package.xml location>

-u: Username or alias of the connected Salesforce Org
-r: Location where zip file should be saved
-k: location of the package.xml

Here, metadata is the folder name where the retrieved metadata zip file is to be stored (retrieved metadata will be downloaded as a .zip file). As you can see in the above image, metadata/unpackaged.zip is downloaded from the connected org as part of the sfdx retrieve command.

Explained on point 4 of https://techevangel.com/2018/07/26/deploy-retrieve-metadata-using-salesforce-dx-and-vs-code/