In an org to org comparison, if you are trying to compare managed package subcomponents (such as a managed custom field on a non-managed custom object) you may find it confusing that they don’t always show up in your comparison results. This article explains why this is happening.

In the section Prerequisites for managed package metadata to appear in your comparison results in this article, we note that there are two ways to view managed package metadata components. These depend on whether you have the Installed package metadata type included in your metadata filter or not.

As a result, if your source and target have differing versions of a managed package (or the managed package does not exist in one of your orgs) you will see the following behaviour:

The explanation for this is that Gearset can only detect different versions of managed packages if Installed package is included in your metadata filter. If the managed package versions are different, those detected metadata differences could well be a result of version difference (new components etc.) and not user customization. Accordingly, Gearset prevents those subcomponents appearing in your comparison results.

Understanding this, you will need to decide if you want Gearset to know that the managed packages versions are different or not, and adjust your metadata filter accordingly.

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