How do I create a new folder and deploy files to the 12 hive using VseWSS 1.3?

Question

I have created a web part using VSeWSS 1.3. It creates a wsp file and my web part gets installed, everything works great.

I would like to also create a folder in the LAYOUTS directory of the 12 hive and place a couple files in there. How do I go about doing this? I know that I can manually place the files there, but I would prefer to have it all done in one fell swoop when I uses stsadm to install my solution.

Is there a best practices guide out there for using VSeWSS 1.3 to do this? They changed a bunch of stuff with this new version and I want to make sure I don't mess anything up.

Answer 1

You can create a new folder structure in your webpart project, like: Templates/Layouts/CustomFolder and put your files in the CustomFolder directory and include them in your project.

When you go to the WSP View in Visual Studio, you can see in the manifest.xml that your files are being included in the deployment.

I have done this successfully on multiple projects now.

Answer 2

In case anyone is wondering, the VSeWSS 1.3 user guide is incredibly helpful. It is installed to the same directory as the tool itself, default in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SharePoint Developer Tools 9.0\VSeWSS13.CHM

Answer 3

You can see a working example with screenshots Here

Answer 4

A simple step-by-step tutorial for the above, along with deploy/retract scripts is here at Add New Files To 12-Hive Through A SharePoint Solution. Just follow the steps and in a few minutes you'll be able to add whatever you want to the 12-Hive!