sfdc package postinstall

This is a postinstall script to be included in your Salesforce packages that you want to publish on npm.

Getting Started

Usage:

Inside of your Salesforce package project that you want to publish to npm, initialize a package.json by running npm init or creating a package.json file manually.

$ npm init

Next install this postinstall script as a dependency using --save. It's very important that you install this as a dependency and not a devDependency because it needs to be installed when your package is installed.

$ npm install --save sfdc-pkg-postinstall

Now we need to add a simple postinstall script to the package.json scripts hash. Here is what needs to be added.

"postinstall": "node -e \"require('sfdc-pkg-postinstall').install()\""

Make sure you add the following keyword as one of your package's keywords. This will be used to facilitate easy searching for salesforce packages.

keywords: ["sfdc-package"]

Now you can publish your package to npm and install it in another project!

Check out my sfdc-trigger-framework project for an example of how this is accomplished. You can also check out the package.json in that project for a full working example.

Requirements

In this initial version, your salesforce metadata must be in a src directory and your subsequent folder structure should match what's returned from the metadata api. For example, Apex Classes should be in /src/classes.

What Packages can I `npm install`?

I'm asking that packages that support this script add the keyword sfdc-package to the package.json keywords array. Therefore, You can search for packages by visiting:

SFDC Packages on npmjs.com

Or from the command line:

$ npm search sfdc-package

If this becomes more popular, I'll build a website for this.

Important Notes

THIS IS AN EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT - use at your own discretion. Also, help me out by contributing!
This script merges files into your project's src directory upon install. This is DESTRUCTIVE. Use version control and make sure you know what you're doing.
Salesforce code cannot be namespaced unless in a managed package. Therefore, name collisions on metadata files can occurr. For example, you may have an Apex class called MyClass.cls. If you npm install a salesforce package that also has a class called MyClass.cls, it will overwrite yours.
It might make the install easier on your users if you manually namespace your code to reduce the chances of name collisions. For example, consider naming your apex class "mypkg_MyClass.cls" versus "MyClass.cls". It's ugly, I know, but if this becomes popular, this is going to be necessary...at least for now. I have some other ideas.
This does not deploy any code upon install. It simply merges the code into your projects src dir. You can use something like dmc to deploy your code or other common IDE's and tools like MavensMate.

Help Me

This could be a terrible idea. It could also be great if some of the kinks get worked out. I have some ideas on how to make this work well even without the ability to namespace/import but I want to hear your ideas as well. Feel free to log an issue with a feature request and/or send me a PR for any enhancements.