Add option to create an ad-hoc Package.xml using existing UI

[Jason Clark]

I’m on a project where we do all dev in scratch orgs, use git/Bitbucket to merge changes, and use Bitbucket pipelines to automate SFDX deploys to various environments. Production deploys are handled by a prod ops team using the release branch. BUT - occasionally we need to get a patch out quickly, in which case we manually deploy the affected file(s) to a staging org which mirrors production, and prod ops uses a changeset to move the code to production.

For “manually deploying” a single file to staging, we use SFDX force:source:deploy; for a number of files, we use the same but with the -x package.xml option. This means manually generating the package.xml. It would be great to be able to use the “Metadata Operation Scope” dialog to select files and generate an ad-hoc package.xml. These are one-offs, but occasionally include several files of different types; a smart tool to spit out the XML would save some effort and prevent errors, and the dialog seems like a perfect fit, it just cannot generate an ad-hoc XML file, as far as I can tell.

[Scott Wells]

That's an interesting idea and I can certainly see how it would be useful. It probably fits well with some other work I want to do around better automated maintenance of package.xml files beyond what IC2 does now. I'll keep this on the backlog in that overall bucket.

[Scott Wells]

Issue #2018 is closely related as it requests more search/filter capabilities in the metadata subscription editor when designing a package.xml-based subscription.

[Scott Wells]

Duplicate of #943.