Compare & Promote Between Orgs

sfdt compare enumerates metadata members on both sides and reports what’s source-only, target-only, or in both. Export the source-only set as a package.xml to promote it.

Audit what’s in production but not in source

sfdt compare --source local --target production

Then open sfdt ui → Compare and filter by target-only to see what exists in production but isn’t in your repo (often manual changes that need to be reclaimed into source).

Promote sandbox changes to production

sfdt compare --source staging --target production --output deploy/promote.xml

sf project deploy start --manifest deploy/promote.xml --target-org production

Drift vs Compare

Reach for compare when you care about the presence of members across orgs. Reach for drift when you care about content differences between local source and one org. See the Drift vs Compare table.