First things first: you won't want to make it part of the "source code" for the CumulusCI project you're building, but every folder containing a CumulusCI project should have a /.sfdx/sfdx-config.json file in containing a single JSON-formatted object that has exactly 1 property called defaultusername in it. The value of defaultusername should be the alias that you gave a given Salesforce production org or developer org that you enabled "dev hub" functionality in when you logged the Salesforce CLI, as installed on your computer, into that org. You would have used the command sfdx force:auth:web:login --setalias your-company-hub-org-nickname --instanceurl https://customdomain.my.salesforce.com/. You can see what you called it when you logged in by looking under the "Alias" column of the results of sfdx auth:list.
Here's an example /.sfdx/sfdx-config.json file:
{
"defaultdevhubusername": "your-company-hub-org-nickname"
}If you see an entry under sfdx auth:list that you'd like to use but it has a blank value under "Alias," take the value under "username" and plug it into the sfdx alias:set your-company-hub-org-nickname=the-username-you-chose@example.com, substituting in appropriate values for "your-company-hub-org-nickname" and "the-username-you-chose@example.com," of course.
Note: You need to do this by hand after downloading a copy of this codebase. I did not include a sample in this codebase.
To validate that the "minimum viable build" I've described here is still all you need to make CumulusCI capable of spinning up a scratch org from a project, try the following:
cci flow run dev_org --org your-scratch-org-nickname-here(Substitute beta, dev, feature, or release for "your-scratch-org-nickname-here.")
Once it's finished, spinning up the scratch org, you can open it in a web browser with the following command:
cci org browser --org your-scratch-org-nickname-hereOr, if your computer's default web browser and scratch orgs don't get along, you can make your computer's command line give you a URL to hand-copy-and-paste into a different web browser:
cci org browser --org your-scratch-org-nickname-here --url-onlyOnce you're done, if you need to delete the scratch org before it naturally expires, you can run the following command:
cci org scratch_delete your-scratch-org-nickname-hereOn the other hand, if all you've done is update the dependencies sub-property of project inside of a cumulusci.yml file, rather than deleting and recreating the scratch org, typically all you have to do is run the following (which is really handy if one of the dependencies you've already let install is slow, like NPSP):
cci task run update_dependencies --org your-scratch-org-nickname-hereHead back over to the running scratch org in your web browser and reload an appropriate page in Setup to see that your changes took effect.
And if all you've done is hand-write some new code into /force-app/ or wherever it is you're putting your codebase, then you don't need to delete and recreate the scratch org. You can just run this command:
cci task run dx_push --org your-scratch-org-nickname-hereHead back over to the running scratch org in your web browser and reload an appropriate page in Setup to see that your changes took effect.
That said, usually you'll be doing things the other way around: clicking through the browser in your scratch org, reconfiguring Salesforce, and then pulling down text-based copies of your new-and-improved configuration into your project folder with the following commands:
cci task run list_changes --org your-scratch-org-nickname-herecci task run retrieve_changes --org your-scratch-org-nickname-here