New to WebStorm/NS SDF question: I've figured out the mechanics and it's been a "why haven't I been using this all along" series of moments. I have a 'best advice' question: Is it a good practice to download... well, everything (objects, files, scripts, etc.) into a project so you have all the dependencies in one place, or to do more piecemeal pulls? I'm planning on having both SB and Prod projects if it's the former, but my first works have been more isolated with separate directories for SB and Prod (as well as 'originals' for comparison.

Hey Mark, I'm also new to SDF so I'm not sure if this is the best advice, but I thought I would share my current situation. We have a very large SDF project. In the early days of development, our deployments ran smooth. Now, we are running into a lot of small errors (mainly account specific values, etc.) . My initial approach was to include every single custom dependency and object required in our project. Knowing what I know know, I'm considering taking a modular approach and breaking our work into different SDF projects. Each SDF project will support individual features/customizations. Need to do some more research, but I'm thinking something like this:

Repository #1:

SDF Project (Shared Dependencies)

Objects / Script libraries / etc.

Repository #2:

SDF Project (Feature #2)

Feature specific Objects / Script libraries / etc.

Repository #3:

SDF Project (Feature #3)

Feature specific Objects / Script libraries / etc.

We put almost every customization in our project with the exception of unnamed saved searches and saved CSV imports among others. By unnamed, I mean any object that has a default script ID. To work around deployment issues with a large number of customizations, we have a custom

deploy.xml

file for each feature branch in source control that will deploy only that feature, rather than trying to deploy the whole thing every time.

Mike, are you aware of any documentation available in the help center that would help me understand how to manipulate the deploy.xml file?

We generally do the same as @Mike Robbins. If you search this forum you'll probably find lots of discussion on the topic.

Thank you both, I'll check it out

Same. I really appreciate it!