[BUG] Failing to deploy data extension when using changeKeyField

[anasilva105]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

When trying to update the description of a data extension I'm facing two issues during deployment:

Sometimes the deployment fails and an error messages says that the data extension is already created.
OR it successfully deploys but the tool wrongly updates the customer key and filename of the data extension (besides description).

Expected Behavior

Only the description field of the data extension should be updated.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Deploy a Data Extension using --changeKeyField "Description"
2. Observe logs/behavior during update path.
3. CustomerKey is changed to a value derived from Description.

Version

9.0.3

Environment

• OS: win 11
• Node: 24.15
• npm: 11.13.00

Participation

• I am willing to submit a pull request for this issue.

Additional comments

No response

[anasilva105]

After further analysis I suspect the issue could be on line MetadataType:1089 where this.definition.keyField seems to be CustomerKey instead of Description:

metadataMap[metadataKey][this.definition.keyField] = newKey;

[kacperkruger]

--changeKeyField "Description" will change the Customer Key to the value from the description: Deploy docs

For automations, both name and Customer Key must be unique. If an automation with the same name but a different key already exists, you’ll get an error.

Also, you can’t target a single field for update. If you only want to change the description, just update it in the JSON and deploy without --changeKeyField.