Auto Deployment of Sharepoint Webparts
First of all let me apologize for the nearly 5 month void in my blog. Finally I am once again getting sore eyes from feeds & forums.
I just started out on a Sharepoint project and as usual the learningcurve is vertical. We're going to do some webpart development, which in itself seems pretty trivial. Deployment though a bit more cumbersome. I wanted to avoid having to run :
stsadm.exe -o addwppack
and
stsadm.exe -o deletewppack
..every time I had a webpart ready for release. As a code warm up after my long break I made a Windows Service for the Sharepoint Dev server. The service creates a "hotfolder" that can be shared with other machines. When a webpart cab file is deployed to this folder (i've set it up in the Release build configuration in vs.net) the service picks up the file and does the plumbing needed to make the newly built part availible in the portal. When you delete the file from the "hotfolder" the webpart is also removed from the portal.
Let me know if you want it:) *Warmed up*
UPDATE: I finally realized that I'd never get the time to actually improve on this to the point I would like, so I simply posted the source on my samples on GDN.