Announcing the Final Release of VSeWSS 1.1 (and the upcoming version 1.2)!
Hello all, Alex Malek here, PM for the "Visual Studio extensions for Windows SharePoint Services". I'm pleased to share that today, at the Office Developers Conference in San Jose, we announced the public availability of VSeWSS 1.1 (download). This final version fixes lots of bugs from the CTP, many of which were customer reported (thanks!). It also adds a couple cool new features, namely Visual Basic support and the ability to create new "Features" in WSP View. In March, we'll be releasing versions of VSeWSS 1.1 for German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified, and Korean speakers.
We also announced today that we will be adding Visual Studio 2008 support (finally!) in the upcoming "version 1.2" of the extensions, which you can expect by June 2008. Last, but not least, we now have a "user guide" for VSeWSS available for download. This first version covers how to build "List Definitions" using VSeWSS. In coming months, we'll be adding lots more content to this guide, covering all the other parts of VSeWSS.
VSeWSS Overview
In case you are not familiar with VSeWSS, you can learn more about it here. In a nutshell, VSeWSS is an add-on to Visual Studio that makes it easier to code-up solutions for SharePoint (e.g. Web Parts, List Definitions, Site Definitions, etc). With version 1.1 of VSeWSS, our main objective is to address the community feedback we got from the first release of VSeWSS, with a particular focus on giving developers "more control" :).
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
WSP View
The main new feature for 1.1 is what we call "Solution Package editing". In version 1 of VSeWSS, when you are building an application, the tool is implicitly creating a .WSP file behind the scenes for you, which you can think of as a SharePoint "installer" file. When you hit F5/Debug, VSeWSS automatically installs this WSP solution package, as the mechanism for deploying the project files to the local SharePoint box. While this design has some nice benefits (e.g. VSeWSS doesn't have to hard-code knowledge about where to install files on SharePoint), we heard loud and clear from SharePoint developers that they wanted more control over the WSP that was being automatically generated for them. That's where the new "WSP View" comes into the picture. Using WSP View, you can now see the files and structure of the WSP Solution Package. You can also edit the WSP, changing what "Elements" live in what "Features", as well as editing the (previously hidden) solution .xml files, e.g. Feature.xml.
To bring up WSP View, go to the View menu and choose "Other Windows/WSP View".
New Item Templates
In addition to WSP View, we've also added a few new item templates to VSeWSS. Using the "List Event Handler" item template, you can now add event handlers to existing SharePoint list definition (e.g. "Shared Documents"). Using the new "Template" item template, you can deploy files to the SharePoint file system. To choose which subfolder of "Templates" you would like to deploy to (e.g. LAYOUTS), just add that folder to the Templates folder in the VS Solution Explorer.
For example, if you add an ASPX file under the LAYOUTS folder:
VSeWSS will automatically create the following XML:
What's next?
We're aiming to release VSeWSS 1.2, with Visual Studio 2008 support, by June 2008. For now, we'd love to hear what you think of the final v1.1 release, particularly the new WSP view. Feel free to communicate bugs via comments to this blog posting.
Q/A
- Q: Can I rename a Feature using WSP View?
A: Yes, you can edit the Feature name by clicking twice on Feature node in the WSP View.
- Q: Does VSeWSS 1.1 support Visual Studio 2008
A: No, VSeWSS 1.1 only works with VS 2005. Version 1.2 will support VS 2008.
- Q: Is there a way to create a new empty "Feature"?
A: Yes, you can use the "Create New Feature" button in WSP View to add new empty features to your project.
- Q: Does VSeWSS support Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
A: Yes, VSeWSS supports both Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server.
- Q: Does VSeWSS support Windows XP or "remote debugging"?
A: No, VSeWSS only works against local SharePoint installations.
- Q: What happened to the "SharePoint Solution" Tab in Project Properties from v1?
A: The WSP View is the new place for working with the SharePoint Solution Package. Instead of the property grid experience from v1, you can now directly get at the solution xml files. To bring up WSP View, go to the View menu and choose "Other Windows/WSP View".
Thanks!
Alex Malek
PM Lead - SharePoint
