svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: Server sent unexpected return value (405 Method Not Allowed) in response to MKCOL req
uest for ‘/svn-repo/the-repo/!svn/wrk/96db5daf-a23d-334c-b96e-870d397df28e/module-path/trun
k/web/module-web/src/main/webapp/assets’

After a quick google search, I learned the error is an HTTP error, and that it’s fairly generic with very little technical fixes documented. So I was on the hunt! Fortunately, this one didn’t take too long to solve. The problem ended up being that the folder it was erroring on (module-path/trun
k/web/module-web/src/main/webapp/assets) already existed on the server. Apparently, when I had re-arranged some things (that folder specifically), SVN got confused (probably by Eclipse) and thought it was a new folder that needed to be added to SVN. Not so! The resolution may vary for you, but my solution was to delete my local working copy and co that folder again. I didn’t have any actual changes to the files in that folder, so it was a simple fix for me. You may have to backup your changes, checkout a fresh working copy, and apply your changes again to get SVN straight.

SVN version: 1.6.6
Eclipse version: 3.4.2 (Ganymede)

One key thing to note on the blog is that it is a SharePoint site, and thus adheres to the site architecture! Thus, you can change the site (aka blog) title by going to Site Actions > Site Settings > Look and Feel > Title, description, and icon.

Site settings will look like this (roughly):

The biggest problem is the majority of decision makers don’t truly understand the risk they are running. Even Google didn’t acknowledge the risk before they got themselves hacked in January 2010. Sure, that event was highly sophisticated and planned, but that doesn’t make the risk any less meaningful. Apparently, the Aurora exploit isn’t all that complicated to use in its most basic form.

So I say to all the enterprises, please let’s put IE6 out of its misery, and end support once and for all. You will make a lot of developers very happy. Perhaps the government or some other institution should offer some incentive that would help companies create jobs to do upgrades and such (very much like the Y2k type work).

enter wspbuilder!

from the wspbuilder codeplex site:

A SharePoint Solution Package (WSP) creation tool for WSS 3.0 & MOSS 2007

No more manually creating the manifest.xml file.
No more manually specifying the DDF file.
No more using the makecab.exe application.

The WSPbuilder is a console application that creates SharePoint Solutions files based on a folder structure. WSPBuilder will automatically traverse a “12″ folder structure and creates a SharePoint solution manifest.xml and the wsp file based on the files it finds. Therefore you do not need the knowledge of how to create a solution manifest.xml and wsp file any more.

figure 1: the “12″ folder structure

there are a few setup/use instructions that aren’t explained plainly (at least, none that i could find easily). here’s what i did to set it up and use it:

1. download & install WSPBuilder (you can download the extensions for integration in visual studio or the standalone exe…i tried out the VS plugin, and was unsuccessful in getting the project to build properly)
2. modify your computer’s PATH environment variable by adding the folder where you installed wspbuilder.exe (for example, my addition was “C:\Program Files\WSPTools\WSPBuilderExtensions”) to the path
3. whenever you need to build a sharepoint solution (manifest + cab creation = compiled wsp), open a command prompt
4. navigate to where your 12 folder is for the project you’re working on (for example, %VisualStudioProjects%\feature1 which contains %VisualStudioProjects%\feature1\12)
5. type wspbuilder and hit enter

you will end up with a nicely packaged .wsp file (in addition to a solutionid.txt file, that’s not required for deployment). you can now run your addsolution command from stsadm.

wspbuilder makes things much simpler!

why do you want to override it?

my main reason for overriding the Title column (display) name is the functionality that’s included in the Title column, which i’ve not been able to recreate. here’s a screenshot of the functionality i’m talking about:

basically, it was a preference of allowing the user to be able to “click to edit” on the primary field of my list. unfortunately, i have not found a way to do this without writing a CAML feature. while a CAML-based feature is not out of the question, it’s not necessary in some cases where a simple, out-of-the-box solution meets the need of the business.

what’s the problem?

you can override the display name of the Title column without impacting basic functionality in Sharepoint. it’s noted in many places that you don’t rename the actual column, but only change the display name whenever you edit the column name. however, there are two different approaches to doing this.

do tell…

the first approach is via Site Settings, which is basically Sharepoint configuration. the problem with this approach is that overriding the Title column name via the Sharepoint configuration screens (Custom Content Type > Title Site Column on the Item content type) overrides the Title column on the Item content type. when you override that column on the Item content type, it impacts ALL content types (unless the CAML is explicitly defined for it) that inherit from Item.

the second approach is via CAML. you can provision a content type in CAML and override the column display name. apryl crossland has a great post about doing this. by doing it in the CAML definition, the change occurs exclusively on that content type instead of on the site column on the Item content type. here’s a sample of the CAML.

<FieldRef ID="{fa564e0f-0c70-4ab9-b863-0177e6ddd247}" Name="Title" DisplayName="Request Title" Required="TRUE" />

however, this requires an upload to the Sharepoint site (preferrably via a solution package–see my post on creating solutions). when this is the only part of the customization that requires CAML, you may want to opt to simply use the Edit button column that’s typically provided (what i’m doing for my solution).

first of all, the site vs. web vs. web application terminology was a bit misleading. plain and simple, here’s my understanding:

• web application = the sharepoint installation (virtual directory, usually)
• site = the top level site of the site collection you’re working on (for small groups, http://localhost:8080)
• web = the actual site you’re working with (could have site collections underneath it or could be a child at the bottom of the list)

the other terminology i had trouble with was the field vs. column vs. property. we all know that databases call columns fields, so it wasn’t a stretch to make the distinction. however, the confusing part was the content types take references to fields…not definitions. andrew may has a blog post explaining the differences amongst the terms, but also includes a good explanation of how it works and why (with a pretty picture).

if i run into any others, i will update this post.

there’s a nice little tool, sn.exe, that handles all of this. if you work primarily in the IDE as opposed to command line (as i frequently do), you can setup a command on the tools menu using the methods described on this blog post. this works in visual studio 2003, 2005, and 2008. not sure about others.

keep in mind that for Visual Studio 2008, the path to sn.exe and other commands is:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin

the Code Snippet Manager in the IDE allows for limited customization and no editing, and there are no settings that correspond with the snippet manager. however, what i did find that worked is an open-source Snippet Editor. below are two cool things about the snippet editor.

snippet editing (duh!)

creating snippets in a text editor is the simplest way to create a code snippet. after all, it’s just xml. using the code snippets schema reference, you can easily hand-write any type of snippet. however, the snippet editor is a great tool for quickly creating code snippets with replacements, references, and imports. i haven’t had much success getting the references and imports features to work (manually creating the snippet or otherwise), but i think i’m just missing something (feel free to make suggestions).

snippet locations

through the IDE, you have limited options on modifying locations where snippets are stored. whenever you make a change to a snippet, you must import it through the Code Snippet Manager (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+B if it’s not on your Tools menu) or you must copy the snippet to the right folder (that’s what the import does). there are a couple of other developers in my group, and we use an inhouse-built foundation class library. as a result, there are some common snippets of code that could be extracted into the Code Snippet manager that we need to place on a shared directory. this is also the case with any common coding standards we employ.

the Code Snippet Manager doesn’t give you anything other than snippet organization (and barely even that–more like snippet review). i found a registry hack that suggested it would allow addition of other paths to the Code Snippet Manager list, but i couldn’t get it to work. what i did find that worked was to add the path in the Snippet Editor. the path could be to a shared folder, a fileserver, etc. once it’s in there, you have to restart Visual Studio (i believe) to refresh the paths that have been added.

it’s not a hugely complex tool, but can really make utilizing the snippets feature in VS2k5 a lot more appealing.