The 1.2 version has just been released. It contains loads more 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 – From the context menu of a SharePoint project you can now get the full assembly name copied to the clipboard.
- Cancel adding features – Automatic cancellation of new SPIs being added to features. You can turn this off via the CKSDev settings options.
- Find all project references – Find where a SPI/Feature is being used across the project from the project context menu.
- Activate selected features – Setup which package features you want to auto-activate from the project context menu.
Exploration
- No new features
Content
- ASHX SPI template – Produces a full trust ASHX handler.
- Basic Service Application template – Produces a full trust basic service application.
- Banding SPI Template – Produces a full collection of SP2010 branding elements baseline items.
- Contextual Web Part SPI template – Produces a contextual ribbon enabled web part.
- WCF Service SPI template – Produces a full trust WCF Service endpoint.
- Web template SPI template – Produces a SP2010 web template.
Deployment
- Improvements to Quick Deploy – Performance improvements with a switch from calling into GACUtil.exe and returning to direct GAC API calls to improve performance. Also removal of ‘custom tokenisation’ for now until a more performant version is tested.
- Quick deploy GAC/Bin deployment configuration – A deployment configuration which runs the pre-deployment command line, recycles the application pool, copies the assemblies to either the BIN or GAC depending on their packaging configuration, and runs the post-deployment command line.
- Quick deploy Files deployment configuration – A deployment configuration which runs the pre-deployment command line, recycles the application pool, copies the SharePoint artefacts to the SharePoint Root, and runs the post-deployment command line.
- Quick deploy all deployment configuration – A deployment configuration which runs the pre-deployment command line, recycles the application pool, copies the assemblies to either the BIN or GAC depending on their packaging configuration, copies the SharePoint artefacts to the SharePoint Root, and runs the post-deployment command line.
- Upgrade deployment configuration – A deployment configuration which runs the pre-deployment command line, recycles the application pool, upgrades the previous version of the solution, and runs the post-deployment command line.
- Attach To IIS Worker Processes Step – Which attaches the debugger to the IIS Worker process during deployment.
- Attach To OWS Timer Process Step – Which attaches the debugger to the OWS Timer process during deployment.
- Attach To SPUC Worker Process Step – Which attaches the debugger to the User Code process during deployment.
- Attach To VSSPHost4 Process Step – Which attaches the debugger to the Visual Studio deployment process during deployment.
- Copy Binaries Step – Copies the assemblies during deployment to either Bin or GAC.
- Copy To SharePoint Root Step – Copies the files during deployment to the SharePoint Root.
- Install App Bin Content Step – Copies the files to the App Bin folder during deployment.
- Install Features Step – Installs the features during deployment.
- Recreate Site Step – Recreates the deployment targeted site during deployment.
- Restart IIS Step – Restarts IIS during deployment.
- Restart OWS Timer Service Step – Restarts The SharePoint Timer service during deployment.
- Upgrade Solution Step – Upgrades the solution during deployment.
- Warm Up Site Step – Calls the site to get SharePoint to warm it up during deployment.
To see more details and the full feature list visit http://cksdev.codeplex.com/documentation.
