Cannot manually install Site Collection scoped List Instance with List Definition

Question

Using SHarePoint 2013, I have done the following in Visual Studio 2013:

1. New "Empty SharePoint Project"
2. In the Project, added a new item "List" with a definition and an instance
3. In the Feature, set the scope to Site (default is Web)
4. F5
5. Everything works as expected - the feature is Site Collection scoped, and the list instance is automatically created in the root of the Site Collection.

However, when trying to do this manually instead (as on a production server):

1. Publish the Project to a .wsp
2. Add-SPSolution on the .wsp
3. Install-SPSolution -GACDeployment -WebApplication http://mysharepoint/

In this case, Install-SPSolution gives the following error:

Install-SPSolution : This solution contains no resources scoped for a Web application and cannot be deployed to a particular Web application.

If I remove -WebApplication, the solution can be installed, but the result is that the solution is deployed globally, the Feature becomes Web scoped, and everything is just generally wrong.

All we want is a Site Collection scoped list instance and list definition that is created in the Site Collection root on activation. So the questions that arise are:

• Why does F5 work, when Install-SPSolution does not?
• What magic does F5 do that cannot be done with a manual install?
• What are we doing wrong?
• Is there something wrong with a Site Collection scoped list definition and/or list instance? If so, why does F5 allow it?

Answer 1

You have set the scope of the feature to site level so you don't need the -WebApplication. Solutions with no WebApplication scoped features will be deployed globally this is the normal behavior. The Enable-SPFeature cmdlet is what you would use to activate the feature at the site collection level by specifying the -Url parameter.

Check out MSDN - Elements by Scope to see what feature elements are deployed to what scope (the page is for 2010 but should still apply for 2013).

F5 will simply do an add, install, then activate the feature on the specified site. The feature should still be site collection scoped when added and enabled using PowerShell. You can confirm this via the UI, go to Site Settings and under Site Collection Administration select Site Collection Features if you see the feature here it is site collection scoped.