Since it lacks a GUI, the Ant tool has a steeper learning curve than change sets.

Scripted retrieval and deployment of components can make this process much more efficient.īy integrating Ant with other automation tools, users can schedule deployments to run when they want them, or pull down changes to their development environment every day.ĭespite these benefits, Ant has a number of drawbacks which limit its adoption across teams: Anyone that prefers deploying in a scripting environment will find the Ant Migration Tool a familiar process.Ī typical development process requires iterative building, testing, and staging before releasing to a production environment.

It’s useful for automating or controlling the deployment process more accurately. It gives better visibility into the changes being deployed, as users can easily inspect the raw XML on their machine.Īnt can be integrated with source control systems, such as git, to allow developers to adopt a modern development process. It allows finer-grained access to the deployment process as it gives users total control over the metadata that is migrated. You can see a live example of building and deploying some changes with Ant in this video by Salesforce:įor the experienced developer, Ant has a number of benefits over change sets: Once the deployment is complete, the target org will be in sync with the changes included in the deployment package. Packages are built by the developer and organised into a single folder which is then deployed using the tool.Īlongside the actual metadata to deploy, Ant also uses the concept of a package file which acts as a sort of index for what is included in the deployment. This means all interactions with it are managed via the Command Line Interface (CLI) - there is no user interface.Īnt allows users to deploy sets of metadata changes from one environment to another by building code packages by hand. It's also known as the migration tool.Īnt is a command line tool. It is a Java/Ant based command line utility for moving metadata between a local folder and an org. The Ant migration tool is a free tool provided by Salesforce.

Force.com ant migration tool