Tuesday 12 February 2008

Announcing the Final Release of VSeWSS 1.1 (and the upcoming version 1.2)!

Its out, download it from here. Here's some of its features:

What's New in VSeWSS 1.1?

  • "WSP View", aka "Solution Package editing"
  • No more hidden, non-editable solution content!
  • Create new Features
  • Reorder Elements between Features
  • Conflict validation against existing Features
  • Rename existing Features
  • Change Feature activation order

Visual Basic support!

New Item Templates:

  • "List Instance" project item
  • "List Event Handler" project item
  • "SharePoint Template" item template, e.g. "layouts" files

Faster F5 speed (The tool no longer performs an IISReset. Now it only recycles the app pool.)
Solution Generator: you can now choose which lists should be included when exporting a site.
Many bug fixes, e.g.

  • No more GUIDs in Feature Names
  • Support complex project names, e.g. with periods.
  • Can deploy assemblies to the bin folder, instead of GAC

Plus many more. Download it and let me know what you think.

Fadi.......

4 comments:

Unknown said...

What is the mechanism that builds the pkg directory and its contents when you deploy the solution?

Fadi Noja said...

You can open the package in Visual Studio. Sometimes you might want to modify the site definition and add some extra features.

This tool is very useful for reverse engineering a site (you know how to create something through the UI but not through code).

If you need a hand with anything, let me know.

Fadi

Unknown said...

Thanks for the response.

I agree the tool is very useful and I'm looking forward to v1.2.

What I'm trying to understand is the script/process that runs when you deploy the code. The output window shows it going through several steps (
"Deactivate and uninstall features in old solution",
"Retract and delete old solution testlistdef3.wsp from the SharePoint",
"Generate solution file and setup batch file", etc.
)
and I'm curious where those steps are defined. Below is the output from the deploy process for a list I've been playing with:


------ Deploy started: Project: TestListDef3, Configuration: Debug Any CPU ------
------ Deactivate and uninstall features in old solution ------
Deactivating feature TestListDef3ListEventReceiver ...
Operation completed successfully.
Uninstalling feature TestListDef3ListEventReceiver ...
Operation completed successfully.
Deactivating feature TestListDef3 ...
Operation completed successfully.
Uninstalling feature TestListDef3 ...
Operation completed successfully.
Deactivating feature TestListDef3ItemEventReceiver ...
Operation completed successfully.
Uninstalling feature TestListDef3ItemEventReceiver ...
Operation completed successfully.
------ Retract and delete old solution testlistdef3.wsp from the SharePoint ------
Retracting solution ...
Operation completed successfully.
Deleting solution ...
Operation completed successfully.
------ Generate solution file and setup batch file ------
Creating solution ...
Operation completed successfully.
Creating setup batch file ...
Operation completed successfully.
------ Add and deploy the solution to the SharePoint ------
Adding solution ...
Operation completed successfully.
Deploying solution ...
Operation completed successfully.
------ Activate features in solution if necessary ------
Activating feature TestListDef3ItemEventReceiver ...
Operation completed successfully.
Activating feature TestListDef3 ...
Operation completed successfully.
Activating feature TestListDef3ListEventReceiver ...
Operation completed successfully.
Recycling application pool, IIS://localhost/w3svc/apppools/BPL Dev - 44444...
Operation completed successfully.
========== Build: 1 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========
========== Deploy: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

Fadi Noja said...

Hi,

If you go to the "site definition" directory, you will see there's a file called "onet.xml". That defines everything for you.

Fadi