Salesforce DX Developer Guide

How Salesforce Developer Experience Changes the Way You Work
Project Setup
Salesforce CLI Configuration and Tips
Sample Repository on GitHub
Create a Salesforce DX Project
Create a Salesforce DX Project from Existing Source
Retrieve Source from an Existing Managed Package
Retrieve Unpackaged Source Defined in a package.xml File
Retrieve Unpackaged Source by Creating a Temporary Unmanaged Package
Convert the Metadata API Source
Link a Namespace to a Dev Hub Org
Salesforce DX Project Configuration
Authorization
Metadata Coverage
Scratch Orgs
Development
Build and Release Your App
First-Generation Managed Packages
Unlocked Packages and Second-Generation Managed Packages
Continuous Integration
Troubleshoot Salesforce DX
Limitations for Salesforce DX
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Convert the Metadata API Source

After you retrieve the source from your org, you can complete the configuration of your project and convert the source to Salesforce DX project format.

The convert command ignores all files that start with a “dot,” such as .DS_Store. To exclude more files from the convert process, add a .forceignore file.

  1. To indicate which package directory is the default, update the sfdx-project.json file.
  2. Convert the metadata API source to Salesforce DX project format. 
    1sfdx force:mdapi:convert --rootdir <retrieve dir name>

    The --rootdir parameter is the name of the directory that contains the metadata source, that is, one of the package directories or subdirectories defined in the sfdx-project.json file.

    If you don’t indicate an output directory with the --outputdir parameter, the converted source is stored in the default package directory indicated in the sfdx-project.json file. If the output directory is located outside of the project, you can indicate its location using an absolute path.

If there are two or more files with the same file name yet they contain different contents, the output directory contains duplicate files. Duplicate files can occur if you convert the same set of metadata more than once. The mdapi:convert process identifies these files with a .dup file extension. The source:push and source:pull commands ignore duplicate files, so you’ll want to resolve them. You have these options:
  • Choose which file to keep, then delete the duplicate.
  • Merge the files, then delete the other.

Next steps:

  • Authorize the Dev Hub org and set it as the default
  • Configure the Salesforce DX project
  • Create a scratch org