Syncing to a Named Environment

sfp sync qa

Commenting this on a pull request deploys the PR's changes to the named environment. Because the target is a shared environment, the sync is approval-gated: codev posts an approval request on the PR, and an owner must approve before anything is deployed.

Use this sparingly. A named environment is shared — pushing unmerged code into it puts changes in front of testers that may never merge in that form, and makes the environment drift from what the release process says is deployed there. For day-to-day iteration, sync your review environment instead; it needs no approval and affects nobody else. See which one should I use?

What happens

1. You comment sfp sync qa on the pull request.
2. codev asks for approval — a comment explains what is about to happen and who can approve. An owner replies /codev approve qa (or /codev reject qa).
3. The environment is locked so nothing else deploys to it mid-sync.
4. The PR's merge state is checked out — what your branch will look like after merging, not just the branch by itself.
5. The changes are deployed, and the lock is released.
6. A completion comment tells you exactly what was deployed.

Every sync is a workflow run — follow each step live under Workflows > Runs

Changed files or full packages?

By default, sfp sync uses diff-deploy: it takes only the files your PR changed and deploys them directly, running just the relevant tests. This is the fastest way to get a change onto an environment for a look.

sfp sync qa                 # changed files only (diff-deploy) — fast
sfp sync qa --full-build    # build and install the affected packages properly

Diff-deploy is deliberately lightweight — it leaves no trace in tracking: no artifact records, no version history, no package registry entries. It's for iterating, not for promoting. When you want the environment to reflect properly built and tracked package versions, use --full-build — or merge and let the normal build and release flow take over.

Pre/post deployment scripts and permission set assignments are skipped in diff-deploy mode. If your change relies on them, use --full-build.

Narrowing the sync

sfp sync staging --domain sales          # only the sales domain's packages
sfp sync uat --packages pkg-a,pkg-b      # only specific packages

When it's the right tool

• A stakeholder demo that must show a fix on a known environment today, ahead of the release.
• Verifying a hotfix against an environment's exact shape before merging it.
• An urgent investigation where reproducing on the review environment isn't possible.

If your team is syncing to named environments routinely, that's usually a sign the review-environment setup or the release cadence needs attention — not that more syncs are needed.