MP.SPDevExt VSIX for SharePoint 2010

MP.SPDevExt Blog Series:
Part 1: MP.SPDevExt VSIX for SharePoint 2010 (Currently reading)
Part 2: MP.SPDevExt VSIX for SharePoint 2010: Custom Field Type
Part 3: MP.SPDevExt VSIX for SharePoint 2010: Sandbox Workflow Action
Part 4: MP.SPDevExt VSIX for SharePoint 2010: Sandbox Solution Validator

Making sense is not easy… especially for me :-(. Let’s see if this blog makes sense to the SharePoint developers and they find it useful.

I am a big fan of WSPBuilder and CKSDev. Big tribute to the creators! I am especially amazed by the WSPBuilder for WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007. How much time and efforts Carsten Keutmann has saved by creating WSPBuilder. So much productivity gain! Now in SharePoint 2010, CKSDev community is doing the same job. You guys rock SharePoint custom development!

CKSDev community has created SharePoint project/item templates for almost every SharePoint 2010 artifact which is required for custom development. One big advantage of using these extensions is that they generate standard code. I recently was creating a Sandbox Workflow Action, that time I felt need of extension for it. So I searched in Visual Studio extension gallery and found that there is no such extension available for Sandbox Workflow Action. So finally I decided to create my own. While creating it, I developed interest and ended up creating custom extensions for Custom Field Type and Sandbox Solution Validator in addition. You can download them from this link: MP.SPDevExt. I will add the source code in CodePlex soon...

So once you download and install it…following new VS 2010 extensions will be available for you under SharePoint 2010 menu to use.

Figure: MP.SPDevExt Item Templates

Currently, these extensions are created only for C#. I will soon release the next version which will support both C# as well as VB.Net. Creating Project templates for these extensions does not make sense to me as one can create Empty SharePoint Project and then make use of these item templates. Hence I am not going to create them. However, if you feel need of VS 2010 extension for any other SharePoint 2010 artifact, please let me know. I will be glad to create it for you. :-)

I know the item templates created in MP.SPDevExt are rarely used and hence CKSDev team probably has not created them. Nevertheless, if you need them anytime, go ahead and use! I hope using these extensions will make sense to you!