Developing SharePoint Solutions in Visual Studio Using WSPBuilder : Page 3

This step is not strictly necessary (certainly not in this example as there is no assembly to build) because in a WSPBuilder project which does contain code the ‘Build WSP’ action (see next step) should force a build of the project. However I have noticed that if you rely on the ‘Build WSP’ action to build your Visual Studio project then you will not be informed if the build fails, so in my mind its good practice to build your project first and ensure it builds properly before you package the assembly into a WSP.

25. Right click your project and select WSPBuilder > Build WSP

 

26. Once the Output window reports that the action is ‘Done!’ then your WSP is built. You can find your WSP located within the root of the project folder (not the solution folder) on the file system.

If you deploy your completed solution onto a development SharePoint farm then you should be able to activate this feature within a given site by going to the site features list and clicking the Activate button next to the WSP Builder Sample Link.

You will then notice your new Site Actions link has been activated.

Tools for Developers

As well as providing a packaging solution the WSPBuilder Extensions provide a rich toolset for SharePoint Developers.

Copy to GAC/12 Hive

These two options provide for very simple and quick deployment of physical files onto your development environment. Right click on any file (within the 12 folder) in Solution Explorer and click on ‘Copy to 12 Hive’. This file will automatically be copied into the relevant location on the server which you are working on.

In the same way right clicking on your project and clicking on WSPBuilder > Deploy to GAC will deploy the latest build of your assembly into the GAC.

These tools are invaluable when you are doing iterative development and you need to quickly see the effects of a simple code change, or a change to a feature file.

Deploy/Upgrade/Uninstall

The WSPBuilder context menu provides you with options to deploy, upgrade or uninstall the most recently built WSP onto the server you are working on. These options are time saving and allow you to go straight to testing your solution without having to go to stsadm to perform deployment operations manually.

Recycle AppPools

This simple command on the WSPBuilder context menu will recycle all the application pools. This is very useful if you have performed changes to items which SharePoint or IIS will cache, and saves you deploying/upgrading your solution.

Attach to IIS Worker Processes

Another invaluable command, this one will start the visual studio debugger and attach it to all instances of the IIS worker process. This is how you should be working whenever you are debugging your deployed development solutions. Again this is just a time saving operation, but when it comes to saving time in debugging I am all for it!

Create Deployment Folder

This option will create a ‘deploy’ folder within the projects bin folder. This deployment folder contains the wsp as well as several batch files and a setup file. The setup.exe is from the SharePoint Solution Installer project on CodePlex. The setup file is essentially a user friendly GUI to allow your solution to be deployed on to a SharePoint farm. Please read the documentation on CodePlex if you intend to use this method for deploying your solutions.

As you can see from the above sample using WSPBuilder is an easy and quick way to both develop and package SharePoint Solutions. It is the recommend development tool of the majority of SharePoint MVPs and other SharePoint community experts, and speaking from experience in the field I can confirm that it really is the SharePoint developer’s best friend.

Try it out and see how you get on.