Beginner 15 min read

Introduction to Salesforce DX

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:

  • Explain what Salesforce DX is and the problem it solves
  • Identify the core building blocks: the Salesforce CLI, scratch orgs, and source-driven development

Prerequisites: None — this is the first lesson in the course.

The problem: org-based development

Before Salesforce DX, teams typically shared a single sandbox and treated the org itself as the source of truth. Changes were tracked with change sets, there was no real version control, and merge conflicts stayed invisible until deployment time — often the worst possible moment to discover them.

The SFDX building blocks

Salesforce DX rests on three pillars:

  • The Salesforce CLI (sf) — the command-line tool for everyday operations: authenticating, creating orgs, deploying source, running tests.
  • Scratch orgs — disposable, fully source-backed development orgs, spun up on demand and thrown away when you're done.
  • Source-driven development — your local files, tracked in Git, are the real source of truth, not whatever happens to be sitting in an org.

Together, these three make automated CI/CD pipelines possible — the subject of the last lesson in this course.

Your first two CLI commands

sf --version
sf org login web --alias my-dev-hub

The sf CLI is the entry point to every SFDX workflow — checking its version and authenticating a Dev Hub org are usually the first two commands you'll ever run.

Exercise

Write the CLI command to check which Salesforce CLI version is installed.

Show hint

It's a single flag on the sf command.

BASH

Introduction to Salesforce DX — Quick Check

1. What is the 'source of truth' in a source-driven Salesforce DX workflow?

2. Scratch orgs are meant to be long-lived, permanent development environments.

3. Which tool is the primary command-line entry point for Salesforce DX workflows?

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Summary

Salesforce DX (SFDX) is Salesforce's modern, source-driven development model — it replaces manually clicking through a single shared sandbox with version-controlled source, disposable scratch orgs, and a command-line interface for automating everyday tasks.

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Scratch Orgs and sfdx-project.json →