Salesforce Manifest Helper

Selectively retrieve or deploy members listed in Salesforce package.xml files.

Why this extension ?

When working with Salesforce manifests it's common to retrieve or deploy the entire package.xml.

This extension adds the ability to perform commands on the selected/highlighted lines so you can retrieve or deploy selected members without touching the rest of the manifest.

Core features

• Retrieve or deploy only the selected member(s) from a manifest
  • Supports multiple selections and multi cursor selections.
• Uses the Salesforce CLI (sf) with the user's default org (no alias required).

Commands

• sfdxManifest.retrieve — "Retrieve selected member(s) from Org"

  • Use: open any .xml file select one or more member lines, right-click -> Retrieve selected member(s) from Org.
  • Behavior: writes a temporary manifest containing the selected members and runs sf project retrieve --manifest <tempfilename> (shows CLI output).

• sfdxManifest.deploy — "Deploy selected member(s) to Org"

  • Use: open any .xml file select one or more member lines, right-click -> Deploy selected member(s) to Org.
  • Behavior: writes a temporary manifest and runs sf project deploy start --manifest <temp> (shows CLI output).

• sfdxManifest.generateTypes — "Generate package.xml from selection"

  • Use: open any .xml file select one or more member lines , right-click -> Generate package.xml from selection.
  • Behavior: builds a package.xml containing detected metadata types and member names for inspection or copy/paste.

Optional : Quick start (Local testing / Contributions)

1. Install dev deps and build:

npm install
npm run compile

2. Run tests:

npm test

3. Package a .vsix for local install:

npx vsce package

4. Install locally into VS Code:

code --install-extension manifest-extension-version.number.vsix

Example : code --install-extension manifest-extension-0.1.0.vsix

Tips & troubleshooting

• Ensure the sf CLI is installed and available on your PATH (or configure your environment so VS Code can see it).
• If spawn sf ENOENT appears, sf is not found by the editor process.
• Temporary manifests are written to the workspace by default; check the extension configuration manifestExtension.tempLocation to change that behavior.

Contributing

Contributions, issues and pull requests are welcome - please open them against the repository: https://github.com/shreyas-girjapure/manifest-extension