January 2009 the Microsoft SharePoint Product Group announced the Community Technology Preview of Visual Studio 2008 extensions for SharePoint v1.3 (VSeWSS). Previous VSeWSS versions were not out-of-the box installable on x64 machines, therefore I blogged about Installing Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services on 64-bit machines. It’s great to see that x64 support has been added to version 1.3. The complete list of new features are:
- Can be installed on x64 Server OS machines running SharePoint x64. Previously only x86 Server OS could be used.
- Separate build commands for package, deploy and retract are added
- Command line build, package and retract commands are included enabling continuous integration and build servers. Previously command line build of SharePoint projects was very difficult
- Refactoring support for renaming of Web Parts. Previously renaming a web part required changes in several files in the project
- WSP View improvements for consistency of deleting feature elements, merging features and adding event receivers to features
- Solution Generator can now generate solutions from publishing sites. Previously only regular sites could be generated
- Allowing partial trust BIN deployments of web parts. CAS configuration must still be provided by the developer.
- New project item template for SharePoint RootFiles items
- Deployment will now optionally remove conflicting existing features on the development server prior to redeployment. Previously any feature name conflicts would result in an error
- Ancillary assemblies such as for business logic can now be added to the SharePoint Solution WSP
- Hidden features related to Site Definition projects are now shown in WSP View. They are no longer hidden
- For advanced users a fast deploy is included to update only the compiled assembly on the SharePoint development installation
- The User Guide is now installed with the extensions instead of being a separate download
The final release of VSeWSS 1.3 is planned for the North American Spring of 2009. The CTP version is available on the Microsoft Connect VSeWSS website where you are welcome to post your feedback.
What I did to get the VSeWSS 1.3 CTP working on my Windows Server 2008 development machine
The new VSeWSS version makes use of a Web Service to connect to local SharePoint sites and WCF is used to connect to that Web Service. Because the current VSeWSS version is a CTP version, it’s not marked as stable and contains bugs. Error messages can contain very little information about the problem and how to fix it, so here are my tips to get you started.
Read the “Release Notes”
The Release Notes document contains a lot information how to get this VSeWSS version working and needs to be your starting point.
Getting around the error “The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state.”
The deployment of my SharePoint solutions failed with the error “The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ServiceChannel, cannot be used for communication because it is in the Faulted state”. On my x86 environment I re-registered WCF using the command:
%Windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\ServiceModelReg.exe -r
x64 users can re-register WCF using the command:
%Windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework64\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation\ServiceModelReg.exe -r
More information on the MSDN Forums thread “VSeWSS 1.3 Deploy fails with Faulted state”.
Getting around the error “Error: Assembly {0} not found.”
After I fixed the previous error, the deployment of SharePoint solutions failed with the cryptic error “Error: Assembly {0} not found.”. The VSeWSS Web Service account needs to be in the local administrator group and have SharePoint Farm Administrator rights. My Windows Server 2008 machine is enrolled into it’s own domain, so I did the following:
- Started IIS7
- Created a new application pool with the administrator account as its identity
- Put the VSeWSS Web Service into the new application pool
- Added the administrator account to the WSS_RESTRICTED_WPG user group.
Maybe not the most security friendly way, but for me it is acceptable at the moment for my development environment. More information on the MSDN Forums thread “Problems with use of VSeWSS 1.3 in Visual Studio 2008”.
After all this work I’m able to make use of the new VSeWSS version, hope this helps you.