Sharepoint 2010, where are my content types and fields?

Question

I'm using the new VS 2010 method to develop around sharepoint, so it abstracts a bit from the 2007 raw method. While this is good in one way, something just went wrong, and now I'm unsure what to do.

I have a field defined like this:

  <Field
    Viewable="TRUE"
  Type="Integer"
  ID="{FCF2F7BD-7462-4229-93B3-EFC42308D605}" 
  Name="ID4"
  DisplayName="ID4"
  StaticName="ID4"
  Required="TRUE"
  EnforceUniqueValues="TRUE"
  Group="OrgStructure"
     >
  </Field>

If I open up site settings, neither the Group, nor the field is listed under Site Columns.

I need to manually delete and manage some problematic site columns. How can I edit the site column definition so that they appear in the Site Columns section?

Answer 1

It is very likely that you have nit deployed it. In other words, the feature either may not exist or may not be activated. Please note that if you hit f5 to run the vs.net app and solution gets deployed.. But when you stop debugging vs.net by default retracts the solution which many people do not expect.

Answer 2

The parser that extracts fields from the feature manifest is very sensitive to stuff like comments in the manifest. Make sure you remove all HTML comments in the fields section, or you will not get any fields in your content type!

Theres several examples of this, also in feature upgrade. This is a real shame as this means you cannot document stuff inside your declarative logic in the manifests.