[SalesForce] Destroying dependencies with Ant Migration Tool

Bottom line is cleaning DE orgs is problematic at best.

You do need to list all of your components in the destructiveChanges.xml file unfortunately. The platform will not implicitly delete references nor let you ignore them. There are also some bugs / features even if you do reference all the components.

The solution we have found is to develop a 'dynamic' solution around this process. Which as you say seeks out references and clears them via a deploy. We have shared this, based on a Dreamforce 2012 presentation here.

undeploy : used to remove all metadata from the org.

usage: ant undeploy

Note: This requires a customised ant-salesforce.jar, vote now to have Salesforce support this properly.

Note: Related is the fact that the current Salesforce Ant tool does not pass on the 'purgeOnDelete' setting the underlying Metadata API takes, to effectively clear your waste bin of metadata. This is critical if you want to redeploy a new build. See this idea here to have this supported, until then a custom ant-salesforce.jar is needed.

Edit: Summer '15 made this "all better". If you upgrade your ant-salesforce.jar to one that supports API version 34, you can now pass a "testLevel=RunLocalTests" attribute to sf:deploy like so:

<sf:deploy
  testLevel="RunLocalTests" 
  username="${sf.username}" 
  password="${sf.password}" 
  serverUrl="${sf.server}" 
  deployRoot="src" 
  />

From the docs:

http://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/summer15/release-notes/rn_deployment_run_subset_of_tests.htm

As part of this change, the runAllTests deployment option is now replaced with testLevel. You can choose which tests to run in a deployment by setting the desired test level. For a description of all test levels, see test levels for the deploy() call. In particular, to run a subset of tests in a deployment, set testLevel to the RunSpecifiedTests value and specify the tests to run in the runTests option.

And

http://releasenotes.docs.salesforce.com/en-us/summer15/release-notes/rn_api_meta_new_calls.htm#testlevels

RunLocalTests—All tests in your organization are run, except the ones that originate from installed managed packages. This test level is the default for production deployments that include Apex classes or triggers.

This was the workaround for pre-Summer '15 for posterity:

Because I killed off the better part of a day hacking around in ant to accomplish the workaround @pepefloyd suggested, I wanted to publish a working example; In my case, the test classes are prefixed with "Test_" but you can fool around with the fileset as necessary

This is tested against v30 of the Force.com ant migration tool

<target name="test">
    <sfCompileAndTestUnmanaged checkOnly="true" username="${sf.username}" password="${sf.password}" server="${sf.server}">
        <fileset dir="src/classes">
            <include name="**/Test_*.cls"/>
        </fileset>
    </sfCompileAndTestUnmanaged>
</target>

<scriptdef name="sfCompileAndTestUnmanaged" language="javascript">
    <attribute name="checkonly"/>
    <attribute name="username"/>
    <attribute name="password"/>
    <attribute name="server"/>
    <attribute name="trace"/>
    <element name="fileset" type="fileset"/>

    <![CDATA[
        var filesets = elements.get("fileset");
        var filesetsIterator = filesets.iterator();
        var projectClasses = [];
        while(filesetsIterator.hasNext()){
            var fs = filesetsIterator.next();
            var iter = fs.iterator();
            while(iter.hasNext()){
                var resource = iter.next();
                var clazz = resource.getName().replace(".cls","");
                self.log("CLASS: " + clazz);
                projectClasses.push(clazz);
            }
        }

        var task = project.createTask("antlib:com.salesforce:compileAndTest");
        task.setCheckonly(attributes.get("checkonly") == 'true');
        task.setUsername(attributes.get("username"));
        task.setPassword(attributes.get("password"));
        task.setServer(attributes.get("server"));
        task.setTrace(attributes.get("trace") == 'true');

        //I tried 'importPackage' and conventional instantiation but couldn't get the inner class to instantiate; this works though
        var testsElement = task.getClass().getClassLoader().loadClass("com.salesforce.ant.CompileAndTest$RunTestsElement").newInstance();
        task.addRunTests(testsElement);

        var classClazz = task.getClass().getClassLoader().loadClass("com.salesforce.ant.CompileAndTest$CodeNameElement");
        for(i in projectClasses){
            var clazz = classClazz.newInstance();
            clazz.addText(projectClasses[i]);
            testsElement.addClass(clazz);
        }

        task.execute();
     ]]>
</scriptdef>

Alternatively, we've actually used a version of 'deploy' that does a no-op deploy (the package.xml in the 'ant' directory is empty except for the <version> element. This gives us incremental updates as the tests are running and allows the deployment of the source files to succeed in a separate ant target (not described below) while the tests may fail (insufficient code coverage, failing assertions, etc.)

<target name="test">
    <sfDeployUnmanaged purgeOnDelete="true" ignoreWarnings="true" username="${sf.username}" password="${sf.password}" serverUrl="${sf.server}" deployRoot="ant" maxPoll="75">
        <fileset dir="src/classes">
            <include name="**/*.cls"/>
        </fileset>
    </sfDeployUnmanaged>
</target>

<scriptdef name="sfDeployUnmanaged" language="javascript">
    <attribute name="purgeondelete"/>
    <attribute name="ignorewarnings"/>
    <attribute name="username"/>
    <attribute name="password"/>
    <attribute name="serverurl"/>
    <attribute name="deployroot"/>
    <attribute name="maxpoll"/>
    <attribute name="trace"/>
    <element name="fileset" type="fileset"/>

    <![CDATA[
        var filesets = elements.get("fileset");
        var filesetsIterator = filesets.iterator();
        var projectClasses = [];
        while(filesetsIterator.hasNext()){
            var fs = filesetsIterator.next();
            var iter = fs.iterator();
            while(iter.hasNext()){
                var resource = iter.next();
                var clazz = resource.getName().replace(".cls","");
                self.log("CLASS: " + clazz);
                projectClasses.push(clazz);
            }
        }

        var task = project.createTask("antlib:com.salesforce:deploy");
        task.setPurgeOnDelete(attributes.get("purgeondelete") == 'true');
        task.setIgnoreWarnings(attributes.get("ignorewarnings") == 'true');
        task.setUsername(attributes.get("username"));
        task.setPassword(attributes.get("password"));
        task.setServerURL(attributes.get("serverurl"));
        task.setDeployRoot(attributes.get("deployroot"));
        task.setMaxPoll(attributes.get("maxpoll"));
        task.setTrace(attributes.get("trace") == 'true');

        //Blows up when build timeout is reached if we don't set this (it uses this value when formatting the exception it throws)
        task.setOwningTarget(self.owningTarget);

        var classClazz = task.getClass().getClassLoader().loadClass("com.salesforce.ant.DeployTask$CodeNameElement");
        for(i in projectClasses){
            var clazz = classClazz.newInstance();
            clazz.addText(projectClasses[i]);
            task.addRunTest(clazz);
        }

        task.execute();
     ]]>
</scriptdef>