Salesforce Announces End of Life for ANT Migration Tool

The Spring ‘24 Salesforce release is rapidly making its way to production orgs, with only a few days until it arrives. Between all the new enhancements that have been included, it’s also important to consider functionalities that will no longer be supported or maintained. 

Since Salesforce has now announced that the ANT Migration Tool will no longer be supported, let’s take a closer look into what this tool is, what is now changing and what the alternative is. 

What Is the ANT Migration Tool? 

As a Java/Ant-based command-line utility developed for moving metadata between a local directory and a Salesforce org, the ANT Migration Tool ensures a more streamlined way of deploying your changes to one or multiple environments compared to change sets or manual configuration. 

Other advantages such as the possibility of scheduling deployments or optimizing repetitive deployments cannot go unmentioned, as these were a far step ahead of time-consuming, manual alternatives.

What Is Changing?

Along with the Spring ‘24 release, the ANT Migration tool is no longer supported or recommended by Salesforce as a tool to be used for retrieving or deploying metadata. While it will still work with future API versions, its last release was Winter ‘24, and will not be updated with any new functionality. 

This means that while it is entirely your decision if you continue to use ANT Migration Tool, make sure to pay extra attention to any potential limitations caused by additional enhancements in future API versions following v59.0.  

Recommended Alternative 

As you would expect, Salesforce CLI is now the go-to development tool that guarantees a modern developer experience, fully maintained and supported by Salesforce. Not only does it offer many more possibilities compared to the ANT Migration Tool, but it is also easier to set up and use. 

You can make use of the functionality in VS Code by installing the readily available extension pack once Salesforce CLI is set up. If you’re already using Salesforce’s Code Builder you don’t need to worry about even setting it up.

Final Thoughts

In essence, Salesforce CLI is now the primary and officially recommended tool for using Salesforce metadata services. While ANT Migration Tool will remain functional for the time being, it is still recommended you migrate as soon as possible to enjoy the most up-to-date functionalities.