Fatal Error on a deployment to Production

Question

Trying to validate a change to our Prod org, but it keeps failing with

H:\workspaces\EmergingMarkets\build.xml:19: Failed to process the request successfully. Cause(UNKNOWN_EXCEPTION): INVALID_CROSS_REFERENCE_KEY: invalid cross reference id

but the same deployment package validates just fine in our Full Copy sandbox. The only discernible difference between the two is that the sandbox is Summer 18 whereas production is Spring 18.

There's some destructiveChanges.xml before the main deployment (unravelling dependencies/references on a field API name that got renamed) that then get reinstated in the main package.xml

Any idea where to start on this one? The error message has the usual lack of detail from Salesforce.

Answer 1

Solved it - rather than fiddle about with all the dependencies etc, I moved the incorrectly named field into destructiveChangesPost.xml and didn't have a pre. So the renamed field briefly co-exists with the old version (duplicate), which is then removed in the post-deploy cleanup