Developers trying to get started with SharePoint quickly discover that Visual Studio has little integration with SharePoint sites. Therefore, they have to come up with a development strategy before they can get started. Here is a list of development approaches that you can investigate:
Visual Studio Extensions for Windows SharePoint Services (VSeWSS 1.1)
VSeWSS is a set of tools created by the SharePoint product team for creating SharePoint solutions. You can download the extensions here and the user guide here. VSeWSS is a capable toolset, but currently only supports VS 2005 and does not support creating all of the different types of projects that are possible in SharePoint.
STSDEV
STSDEV is a community project that you can download from CodePlex. STSDEV is a wizard-like tool that creates project stubs for you. The tool is extensible so that it can be made to support any type of SharePoint project. Currently there are several templates available.
SharePoint Development Modifications (SPDevMod)
SPDevMod is a set of commands for the Visual Studio Tools menu and a set of snippets for creating commonly-used SharePoint files. SPDevMod is a simple, repeatable approach to development with little automation. The extensions are available here and a log entry about the approach is available here.
Andrew Connell’s Code Rush Tools
Andrew Connel has created a set of tools for developing SharePoint solutions that utlizes the third-party tools Code Rush and Refactor Pro. His solution creates a nice development environment with lots of development assistance. Find more information here.
Visual Studio 2008
VS2008 supports only one SharePoint project type – workflow. The integration is nice, but still requires a lot of hand coding. For a complete blog entry on creating workflows with Visual Studio 2008, see my blog entry.
