[FEATURE] Bulk retrieve all activities within an automation upon only retrieving an automation

[Beryl-18]

The initial feature I had in mind was, if an automation was retrieved, the script could loop through all the activities within the automation and retrieve them as well automatically. This could additionally extend to Journeys and query retrieves as well.

Plausibly, you could also automatically loop through sql scripts and retreive the source and target dataextensions automatically when retrieving SQLs as well.

I see that SFMC companion has something similar to this, but retrieving them in mcdev and directly editing and quickly deploying would be a super helpful for quick rollouts instead of redundantly having to check and retrieve each of the queries, DataExtension, etc.

[JoernBerkefeld]

have you considered using build for that?
if you retrieve everything from your BU, you can then run build with -m automation:yourKey --dependencies - that will ensure that not only the automation but also relevant activities get copied (and potentially templated) to the deploy folder.

[Beryl-18]

i tried to run mcdev build -m automation:key --dependencies but just states that i need to use market templates to build. I guess this would only ideally work when everything is properly templatized?