MSDN Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 34)

select the type of SharePoint development solution to be generated (see Figure 2). The STSDEV utility was designed with extensibility in mind. Each of the available solution types is basically a solution provider class that implements a very simple STSDEV-specific interface named ISolutionProvider: public interface ISolutionProvider { string Title { get; } void InitializeSolution(); void AddSolutionItems(); } Figure 2 Creating a Visual Studio Solution with STSDEV The goal behind this design is that advanced Sharefact, if you ever discover a component type that Point developers can easily extend STSDEV by cannot be deployed via a solution package, you creating their own solution providers, which can should consider avoiding it when designing and then be used to generate Visual Studio projects developing SharePoint-based solutions because for a particular scenario or to meet the standards it will compromise your ability to install, mainand guidelines of a particular company. tain, and upgrade your development efforts in a However, every solution and project created usproduction or staging environment. ing STSDEV will always share a common strucWhen you are developing for WSS 3.0 or MOSS ture and a standard set of deployment files that 2007, you should configure Visual Studio projare used to generate the output solution package. ects to generate a solution package for you, and The STSDEV utility also creates each Visual Stuyou should do it early in the development cycle Figure 3 HelloWorld Project dio solution with a standard set of configurations Structure of any project. I have seen many developers defer and custom build targets that allow developers creating the solution package for testing purposes until late in the to automate many of the operations needed during development development lifecycle, which can cause problems and unexpected such as installing, deploying, or retracting the current project’s sodelays. It is much better to do the extra work of configuring your lution package. Visual Studio project to build the solution package right away and To get a better idea, let’s examine the structure of a HelloWorld to conduct all testing using solution package deployment. solution generated using the Empty Solution provider. As you can So how do you configure a Visual Studio project to automate see from Figure 3, STSDEV generates a solution file, named Hellothe build of the .wsp file that represents the solution package? You World.sln, and a project file, HelloWorld.csproj, that can be created have a few choices. For example, you can write a batch file that calls using either the Visual Studio 2005 solution format or the Visual the MAKECAB.EXE utility to generate the .wsp file and then call Studio 2008 solution format. Also keep in mind that the STSDEV it from a build event in Visual Studio. But while this method pro- utility creates Visual Studio projects using the standard Class Livides a quick and easy way to automate running commands from brary Project type, which makes it easy to upgrade a Visual Studio the Visual Studio build process, it is more flexible and more main- 2005 project to Visual Studio 2008. tainable to use custom build targets instead. Using its standard project structure, the STSDEV utility creates The STSDEV utility was designed to create Visual Studio solu- a folder named DeploymentFiles and another folder named Roottions that allow you to run many SharePoint-specific command Files. The DeploymentFiles folder contains four files that are used sequences right from within the Visual Studio development envi- to build, deploy, and debug the output solution package: ronment. Whenever the STSDEV utility creates a new project, it Manifest.xml The solution package manifest required by Sharedoes so with several different configurations and adds an MSBuild Point that must be built into the output solution package file (for custom build target to each configuration. That makes it possible to example, HelloWorld.wsp). simply switch between configurations and then run the standard SolutionPackage.ddf A diamond definition file used as input to Visual Studio build command to execute a specific build target. This the MAKECAB.EXE utility to build the solution package file. target contains a common sequence of commands used in Share- SolutionConfig.xml A file used by STSDEV to track additional Point development, such as using the MAKECAB.EXE utility to solution metadata required to regenerate manifest.xml and Solubuild a solution package and then using the STSADM.EXE utility tionPackage.ddf. This metadata includes a GUID for Solution ID, to install and deploy the solution package in the local farm. the output solution package name, and optionally additional assembly deployment information, such as SafeControl entries and Getting Started with STSDEV custom Code Access Security (CAS) settings. Let’s start off with a quick walkthrough of how the STSDEV util- Microsoft.SharePoint.targets A file containing custom build tarity works. You can begin by running STSDEV without passing any gets in MSBuild format that are used in SharePoint development. parameters. The utility brings up a dialog that prompts the user to While the DeploymentFiles folder always contains these four 34 msdnmagazine Office Space

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - March 2008

MSDN Magazine - March 2008 Contents Toolbox CLR Inside Out Data Points Advanced Basics Office Space Introducing ASP.NET MVC Loosen Up CI Server Performance Office Development Test Run Security Briefs Extreme ASP.NET Foundations .NET Matters {End Bracket}

MSDN Magazine - March 2008

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