Posted By: Jay Beavers

We've recently posted Sharepoint Learning Kit release 3a to the community site.  This release contains the exact same functionality as CTP 3 but has been tweaked to make it easier to build.  With CTP 3, we released instructions on how to build it on the community wiki site but you had to jump through some hoops to copy files and change references to get everything working.  In release 3a, we've jumped those hoops for you.  The shortened build steps are:

1. Download and unzip the CTP 3a Source Code from the Codeplex site.  If you don't have Visual Studio 2005 installed on your machine, download and install Visual C# 2005 Express Edition from MSDN.
   Note: Visual C# 2005 Express Edition does not include aspx designers for easy editing.  If you want to edit the aspx pages too, it's better to have one of the other editions of Visual Studio such as Visual Studio Standard Edition or better.
    
2. Copy Microsoft.Sharepoint.dll from your Sharepoint 2007 Beta 2 server's hard drive into the References directory. This DLL is found at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\ISAPI\Microsoft.Sharepoint.dll.
   Note: If you have unziped the source code onto a computer that has Sharepoint installed, the build process will copy this file for you.
    
3. Disable Strong-Name validation on your .NET runtime since these assemblies are unsigned. Open a Command Prompt, type 'Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\Bin\sn.exe -Vr *,abc4ed181d6d6a94'.
    
4. Open SLK-SourceCode-1.1.0.633-ENU\Slk\Dll\SlkDll.sln and build. This will install the assemblies in the Global Assembly Cache automatically which makes for easy debugging.  More detail to come in a future blog post on debugging.
   Note: If you are running Vista, make sure that you are running in a full permissions window. Otherwise, installing the assemblies in the GAC will fail.
    
5. (Optional) Create the new WSP file.  You only need to do this if you are intending to perform a "fresh install" with your updated code.
   Open a Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt. Change directory into SLK-SourceCode-1[1].0.633-ENU\Slk\Solution. Type 'msbuild wsp.proj' to build SharepointLearningKit.wsp.
   Note: Visual C# Express does not include support for the command prompt or MSBuild, so you will need Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition or better to perform this step.

This release concentrates on simplifying the process of compiling the core SLK code.  Future releases will work on improving the development process for aspx pages and sample code.

Coming soon: deploying a custom build