I’m new to source control (git in our case) and have just set up a development flow with CI using Gearset. That’s all well and good (and working fine). But, I also want to set up VCS within my IDE (IntelliJ with Illuminated Cloud) so that I don't have to make commits via Gearset. We're not using SFDX, if that matters.
I’ve tried several different configurations but I don’t think I’ve got it. Is my /src directory in the Illuminated Cloud project supposed to be my local repo? If so, I’m not sure how to make it work. I’ve cloned our remote repo to that directory, but then I’ve got a bunch of files that aren’t in my IC subscribed metadata types, not to mention the fact that I don’t really want all the source control metadata types in my IC project anyway.
If my IC /src directory shouldn’t be the cloned repo…then should I just initialize it as a new repo? I like this, but then I’m not sure how to create or make commits to a branch of our remote repo…which I suppose would also be locally cloned…somewhere?
Best Answer
I have a similar setup as you. Using Gearset and Illuminated Cloud.
I think an answer you're overlooking is: you can use both to push in different types of changes. I don't use Illuminated Cloud to push everything to github. I try to use both to their strengths and that makes my life easier:
Use IC (Illuminated Cloud) to push code/declarative changes
Everything else (typically UI changes), I use Gearset.
Why? It can be difficult retrieving in the right info regarding profiles or dependencies between UI changes. This is one of the benefits of Gearset, it simplifies (ex. profiles) and makes it easy to see the difference and add in exactly what you want. That saves me time. If you have both tools, there's no reason to not use both when it suits you. A simple "pull" in the IDE will bring in all the changes you pushed from Gearset
In regards to IC (and if you did want to do it all in there)