Sharepoint best practices

Question

I am starting becoming a sharepoint developer... I am not sure what I did in a previous life to warrant this, it must have been bad!

Anyway I am getting buried in a world of xml and guids that it seems should be automated, each time I add something to a folder I have to add little bits to a number of different xml files, and WOE betide you if get the wrong GUID in one of them (or hack the wrong key out the GAC)

Please tell me someone has worked out how to take the pain from sharepoint! No human can put up with this for long!

Answer 1

In my experience, no, there is no salvation from that particular set of problems in Sharepoint, but I'd also love to hear it if someone else has found a way around it.

Answer 2

You don't say which parts you are having trouble with. If it is project/solution generation, take a look at STSDev. For solutions, Solution Installer and WSPBuilder. For Web parts, take a look at SmartPart.

There are in general some good usable tools on CodePlex, just search for SharePoint there.

Answer 3

In general, Microsoft's tooling for SharePoint is pretty weak at the moment. Hopefully this will improve over time! That said they have released the Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (VSeWSS) for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 which I find pretty useful.

I typically use the UI to generate list and/or site definitions and export them using VSeWSS. From there I create features using the exported XML files (with a bit of cleaning up here and there) and bundle the features into a solution.

There's still a lot of fiddling with XML though. VSeWSS will try and hide some of that from you, but I personally use WSPBuilder because it gives me the most control. (Un)fortunately, you eventually get used to the markup SharePoint and it does get easier!

For web parts I code these by hand and package into features. SharePoint Designer can also come into handy here when configuring them.

For page layouts I use SharePoint Designer to create and tweak them and then put them into a WSPBuilder solution in Visual Studio and package them into a solution.

Answer 4

Here's a great article that lists some of the most commonly used SharePoint developer tools:

How to Build a SharePoint Development Machine http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2007/02/23/build-a-sharepoint-development-machine.aspx