SharePoint development tools
Before you start writing your first SharePoint application you should spend some time to choose your development tools. The right set of tools will help you to save time and you don’t have to do so much work manually. Generally you need tools that will help you analyze, create and deploy your solution into SharePoint. I will discuss about three tools that will help you to analyze, package and install your application. These tools are only few that you can find. The choice is made mostly by my experience using different tools.
WSPBuilder
The most important tool in the SharePoint solution development lifecycle is a solution package creator. WSPBuilder is a simple solution package builder which will integrate with Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. It will allow you to create, install, upgrade and uninstall your solution package (WSP) and even create deployment folder which contains deployment scripts and installation program. After you install this tool it will create a new menu item and context menu into your Visual Studio (VS) environment.
WSPBuilder is quite dynamic with its capabilities. You can start your project with a simple class library, it won’t add mysterious dependencies to project which won’t let you to open your project in another VS environment. Only requirement that WSPBuilder needs is that you have to create your project folder structure like in the SharePoint 12 hive “C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\12”
SharePoint Solution Installer
After you have created your project solution package you can use a nice installer, which will help your application users to install the application.
It is much simpler than using SharePoint built-in administrative tool stsadm.exe. You can create custom End User Licence Agreement file and add it to installer. You can even specify which features will be activated. Before you can install your solution installer will check your system to meet te requirements (MOSS or WSS application, application installed or not).
SharePoint Manager 2007
Sometimes you need get some list item field internal name or you want to add some list definition into your project and make some modifications. Usually to get some property value from list or list item is impossible because property is hidden in the UI and you cant find the value from the site or list template. SharePoint Manager will help you with these problems.
It is a nice tool what you can use to find properties, schemas, etc. from Site Collection, Web, List, etc. SPM will help you to check if your code run as expected and it did set the workflow association data. With SPM you can make even changes to some properties, but you must be careful with that and you have to know what are you changing and what value the property expects.
Conclusion
Every tool in this list has somehow helped me in my development. I’m using SP Installer because it is simple and it will allow change the installer experience by simply changing some property values in installer configuration.
SharePoint Manager is a create tool to check some property values, internal names, to get minimal list schema and it will allow me to do this without opening SharePoint site.
WSPBuilder is the simplest package creation tool I have seen, it allows me to create multi-project solution and simply referencing assemblies it will create a nice package with everything my application needs.
Other tools
- Visual Studio Extensions For Windows SharePoint Services 1.2
- Simple Tools For SharePoint 2007 Development
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