List of SharePoint development tools

Question

What tools do you consider essential in your SharePoint development toolkit?

One answer per tool please so the community can vote!

Answer 1

Spencer Harbar's Application Pool Manager, for speedy and specfic App Pool resets.

Answer 2

Gallio and MBUnit testing frameworks

Answer 3

I use sharegate to deploy sites from DEV to QA to Prod and Prod to QA to Dev.

http://www.share-gate.com

From their website :

sharegate is a light yet powerful tool to compare and synchronize your SharePoint environments in only three steps. It quickly detects the differences between your sites and allows you to send your chosen selections to your desired destination from anywhere in your organization. Our tool accelerates your SharePoint deployments by significantly reducing the time consuming manual process. The power of sharegate resides in its simplicity and its cost. We all agree that we need a simple tool for SharePoint synchronization.

Answer 4

I would recommend the SharePoint Software Factory which not only allows you to develop for SharePoint 2007 and 2010 from either VS2008 or VS2010, but also supports you with wizards to create the usual SharePoint artefacts.

Have a look at the video on the codeplex page.

Answer 5

I would say a Virtual PC/Environment is essential

Answer 6

I also found CAML.NET IntelliSense to be very valuable. This has saved me alot of time.

Answer 7

One app, that allows me to navigate the SharePoint folders and having shortcuts to them, walk in and out of WSP's, quickly view the content of the files etc is Total Commander.

Using Windows Explorer and walking down into the 12-hive, right-click, select open with really takes to much precious time. Using Total Commander I have shortcuts to the different folders in the 12-hive and then uses the builtin quick search to find the file and the builtin viewer program.

This is one tool I can't live without, and is the first thing I install on all machines (if I don't use Live Mesh, which contains my Total Commander installation folder).

Answer 8

On the nerdy side, but when Reflector gives up due to obfuscation, and you just need to know what happens behind the scene, enter ildasm.exe True you need to be able to read IM language, but its pretty self explanatory, and have helped me many times. For example when i wanted to know what exactly happend behind the scenes when you use -force (bad bad practice!) in stsadm.exe operations (bonus info: -force basicly swallows all exceptions, so you never will see those other code issues your callouts or similar had)

Answer 9

I like Crimson Editor as an alternative to notepad. Lightweight (no waiting time to start like visual studio), tabbed interface, macros, "column mode".

Great for quickly creating xml files, csv files, or transforming an xml file into a set of c# lines (using macros)

Answer 10

Cruise Control .NET to allow nightly builds of your SharePoint solutions.

Answer 11

Web Development Helper or some similar tool, to track the communication between the browser and the SharePoint Server. Especially usefull when developing with Ajax, jQuery, Silverlight, or any other RIA technology.

Answer 12

I use SPVisualDev. Integrates with wspbuilder and now apparently allows remote development (did not try this yet).

Answer 13

MOSS BDC Design Studio. Cheaper than Metaman but I found to have all the tools I need to create ADFs for the Business Data Catalogue.

Answer 14

a bit of shameless self-promotion, but SharePoint InlineSiteSettings is a small jQuery script I put on CodePlex that saves a developer (or admin) a significant amount time by shortening the navigation paths and limiting the amount of mouse clicks required to get to a particular admin page in SharePoint. It's all about keeping the momentum going :)

Answer 15

Moss Query Tool - Excellent tool to test search queries against the MOSS search database. The application helps you build queries as well.

I can't seem to find the download link anywhere but after a quick Google search, I found this tool SharePointSearchServ which apparently replaces MOSS Query Tool.

Answer 16

Fxcop for static code analysis, in case you are using a VS prof edition

Answer 17

I'm going to demonstrate a bias too, but then, I do lots with SharePoint search and I'm always using it:

SearchCoder

Helps you write and quickly test search queries.

Answer 18

SysInternal's (now Microsoft) Process Monitor is essential for troubleshooting security and other problems related to access to the file system, registry etc. Not SharePoint specific, but I find myself using it in combination with SharePoint on a frequent basis.

Answer 19

If you want to create an on the go, Standalone SP virtual server, use 'VM Player'. It's free and easy to use :D!!

Answer 20

Imtech Fields Explorer

Great tool for exporting content types, site columns and lists definition in XML; available on Codeplex.

Answer 21

Here is a very relevant thread from a few years ago before 2010 was released: List of SharePoint 2007 / WSS 3.0 development tools

Answer 22

A tool usefull for sites content migration: WssAnalyzeFeatures

This tool allows to verify if the feature definition files for all installed features are present on the file system. Also allows to verify if the features used in site collections an sites are installed on the server. In addition it can create a checklist file which can be used to verify if a server has all features installed required to act as destination for a content deployment job of an existing sitecollection.

Usage:

WssAnalyzeFeatures -url http://server:port

More about it here: WssAnalyzeFeatures

Answer 23

User Profile Service application Debugging:

if you couldn't set up User Profiles service application in the correct way, you might not get to the actual error straightaway during the sync. The right way to get the actual error message is to use the Synchronization service manager (MIIS Client) and debug User Profile service application.

Path to MIIS Client can be found at:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Synchronization Service\UIShell\miisclient.exe

Answer 24

Here are a few helpful tools I use:

ULS Viewer (to view ULS Logs) -http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/ULSViewer/

SPCAMLEditor (to edit XLST) -http://spcamleditor.codeplex.com/

Here's a list of other useful tools:

https://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/devwiki/articles/Pages/SharePoint-Dev-Toolbelt.aspx

Answer 25

I use only SharePointDesigner2010 and InfoPath2010. These are good too.

Answer 26

Yet another great decompiler for investigation of inner working of SharePoint - dotPeek

Main features

• Decompiling .NET 1.0-4.5 assemblies to C#
• Support for .dll, .exe, .zip, .vsix, .nupkg, and .winmd files
• Quick jump to a type, assembly, symbol, or type member
• Effortless navigation to symbol declarations,implementations, derived and base symbols,and more
• Accurate search for symbol usages with advanced presentation of search results
• Overview of inheritance chains
• Support for downloading code from source servers
• Syntax highlighting
• Complete keyboard support

and dotPeek is free!

Main Window

Answer 27

LinqPad - free development tool for learning and testing Language Integrated Query (LINQ) against SQL, ODATA, or an Entity Framework solution

Purpose

Great way to learn to Query the SharePoint List Data Service with LinqPad

Main Window

References

• SharePoint 2010 REST interface on MSDN
• Learn to Query the SharePoint List Data Service with LinqPad article
• Using LINQ to SharePoint on MSDN