It would be quicker and easier to use the command line to update a dll in the GAC. You can do this with the Global Assembly Cache Tool gacutil, but this is only present if you have the .net SDK or Windows SDK installed. This is going to be the case with your development machine, but you don’t really want to be installing it on all your test servers.

To get round this I knocked up a quick utility which will remove an existing version of a dll from the GAC and then install the latest version. The code is:

using System;using System.Globalization;using System.EnterpriseServices.Internal;

namespace Test{    public class GacInstall    {        public static void Main(string[] arguments)        {            try            {                string assemblyPath = arguments[0];                Publish publish = new Publish();                publish.GacRemove(assemblyPath);                publish.GacInstall(assemblyPath);            }            catch (Exception e)            {                Console.WriteLine(e);            }        }    }}

You can then use it by passing it the dll you want as a command line parameter e.g.

GacInstall MyUpdatedCode.dll

Assuming that MyUpdatedCode.dll is in the same directory.

Combined with my last tip Recycle An Individual Application Pool From The Command Line you can now write a bat or cmd file to replace the dll in the GAC and recycle the application pool with 2 key presses: The up arrow key and then return.

Just add ?contents=1 to the end of the url, directly after the .aspx. If there’s already a query string there (the bit after the ?) then delete it and replace with contents=1.

For example to delete multiple web parts from http://cmis/sites/mis/default.aspx use http://cmis/sites/mis/default.aspx?contents=1.

You can then select multiple web parts and hit delete to get rid of them all at once.

This is also useful for getting rid of web parts which cause fatal errors on the page and closed web parts.

If anyone else is going it would be great to meet up. If anyone is interested we could try to find some space for an SLK discussion group. Let me know if you are interested in either of those and I’ll see what we can arrange.

I’ve lost count of all the little console utilities I’ve written to dump things like list fields, view CAML etc, all of which you can browse to with the tool. I think that it’s going to save me a lot of time and increase my knowledge of SharePoint.

What you may not know is that there are a couple of tools/techniques which can help you find areas in your code where you are not disposing of objects correctly.

1. SPDisposeCheck. This is a tool which will analyze your assemblies to search for coding patterns which lead to objects not being disposed correctly. It’s a great tool and worth running regularly on your assemblies.
2. SPRequestStackTrace registry value. Creating the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\HeapSettings
SPRequestStackTrace: DWORD = 1

Will cause the SharePoint runtime to log a stack trace everytime a SPRequest object is not disposed of correctly. This will actually pick up all the types of objects not being disposed of as internally the problem with not disposing of them is that they contain a reference to SPRequest.

At this point I have to say thank you to Jared Kahlil who pointed out a memory leak in the SLK by using the second method above and started my research into both of these methods. Unfortunately we can’t use SPDisposeCheck on SLK as it checks to see if the file name begins with Microsoft and if there are any namespaces beginning with Microsoft, and if so ignores the assembly.

However, for those who don’t want to do this, an alternative would be to create sites for the pupils within your normal SharePoint structure, just like your class sites under the Classes tab in MLG. You’ve then got all your normal permission levels and restrictions you can use, and generally tie it up a lot tighter. You can even define custom permission levels. I’m working with a few schools on implementing this for pupils and staff using Salamander SharePoint.

Taking it to another level, a request I’ve just received from one school is:

I am quite interested in developing a
SharePoint site, similar to the class sites for every teacher. Giving them a kind of My Site where they could post resources, links and a profile etc.  I would need the script to create a site for each member of staff based on a template and then assign permissions for the teacher and then for all the students that the teacher teaches. 

This is actually quite powerful and really easy with Salamander SharePoint. It sets up collaboration sites and also the community which can use them, and automatically keeps this community up to date. It’s requests like these which can add another level to how SharePoint is used in your school.

The easiest and most obvious way, altering the templates, is not supported as they are considered a core part of SharePoint. It will work, but Microsoft do not guarantee that they won’t be overwritten in any upgrade.

That leaves the only way is by running some custom code. This isn’t great for anyone who isn’t a developer. If you want how it’s done, Steve Peschka has some great information on how to do this on his blog. Even better than this, he has wrapped it all up as part of the Community Kit Project for SharePoint on CodePlex and released it as MySiteCreate.

What MySiteCreate allows you to do is specify a different master page for the My Sites and also specify web parts and their properties in an xml file. No more messing around with code, just a great tool to let you get on with the job.

Interestingly it the My Documents web part which is explicitly mentioned, while Salamander SharePoint which is used to generate the class sites is referenced as a third-party provisioning tool. Salamander SharePoint is much more powerful than My Documents so it’s strange we’re mentioned in relationship to one and not the other.

To use it there’s 3 properties which you need to set:

1. Site Url: The url of the site the list in on.
2. List Name: The name of the list.
3. View Name: The name of the view to use to display the list.

The connection to the list is made as the user viewing the web part, so will use their permissions. So if they don’t have permission on the list, they won’t see it.

If you want to display a list from another site collection, then it needs to be on the same server.

It’s only a Beta release so not all Errors have graceful error messages. You can download it from http://www.salamandersoft.co.uk/webparts/listview.zip. The beta will expire on 19 Jan 2009.

Have a go and let me know what you think either in the comments or email to listview@salamandersoft.co.uk.

I’m sure there’s other features I could add, but that depends on how popular it is and whether there’s any demand for them.

Twynham has done some great stuff with their SharePoint set up and even better are happy to share their experiences. They’ve even put up a site to showcase what they’ve done at  http://gateway.twynhamschool.com/supportinglearning/onlinereporting/default.aspx.