Since 2009 CKSDev has been available to SharePoint 2010 developers to aid the creation of SharePoint solutions. The project extended the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint project system with advanced templates and tools. Using these extensions you were able to find relevant information from your SharePoint environments without leaving Visual Studio. You experienced greater productivity while developing SharePoint components and had greater deployment capabilities on your local SharePoint installation.
The Visual Studio 2012 release of the MS SharePoint tooling supports both SharePoint 2010 and 2013. Our aim for CKSDev was to follow this approach and provide one tool to support both SharePoint versions from within Visual Studio 2012.
The VS2012 version has just been released. It contains the core quick deployment and server explorer features you had available in VS2010. All of the other features will be coming over the coming weeks as personal time allows. As you can imagine it’s no mean feat to port all of the existing features and support multiple SharePoint versions. The code base is also on a diet as code bloat was getting a little bit crazy as the tools evolved over the past 4 years.
You can find CKS: Development Tools Edition on CodePlex at http://cksdev.codeplex.com.
Download the extension directly within VS2012 from the extension manager or visit the Visual Studio Gallery.
We’re still looking for extension ideas so please post in the CKS Dev Discussions anything you think would make life better for SharePoint developers.
CKS Dev Feature highlights
Environment:
- Copy assembly name so no more need to use reflector to get the full strong name.
Exploration
- New Server Explorer nodes to list feature dependancies, site columns, web part gallery, style library, theme gallery.
- Enhanced import functionality for web parts, content types, themes.
- Create page layout from content type (publishing).
- Copy Id.
Content
- Coming Soon…
Deployment
- Quick deploy to copy artefacts into the SharePoint root without the need for a build.
- Deployment steps Coming Soon..
To see more details and the full feature list visit http://cksdev.codeplex.com/documentation.
Visit the CodePlex site for more information about the features and release.
