One of the many questions I’d asked myself during the course of my travels in MOSS is what files get referenced within a feature.xml’s manifest.
There are two elements one needs to be concerned with within the <ElementManifests> collection, an <ElementManifest> and an <ElementFile>. The difference between the two is that an <ElementManifest> file is processed as part of the feature activation; that is the contents of the file are acted upon immediately. <ElementFile> entries however are just references – almost like packing slips in a shipment. The files listed as an <ElementFile> will only be processed at the appropriate time.
In the example below you’ll see where I have a feature that is used to create a set of site columns, two content types, a workflow and a list template.
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Folks, I know that we’re dealing with a 1.0 product here, but is that any reason to have messages such as There is an error in XML document (1,2) or Failed to do column assignment to list appear in the MOSS error logs.
I mean, give us developers a fighting chance and let’s have some real error messages. Life’s hard enough as it is without MOSS being deliberatly superincumbent.
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Ok Bill – I’ll buy it that disk space is cheap. However just because it is doesn’t mean that it should be wasted.
I’m talking here about the huge amount of repatition with files such as the List Schema and the various forms that support lists etc.
The schema.xml for tasks weights in at a whopping 530KB! That’s half a Meg of pure XML – most of it repeated.
Each defined view comes with 1651 lines of peripheral fluff (albeit very important peripheral fluff). What was wrong with creating a View fragment and just referencing that eight times (for the eight predefined views that comes with the task content type)? As my boss commented – that’s just XML abuse.
And let’s not forget the large amount of repeated field definition that takes place here (replete with types, choices, default etc.)
Then we’ve the forms – the single item and the view forms. Again – identical. Why? I get the idea that you’d want to allow users to bookmark a form – but what was wrong with using the query string and pass the view name or form action as a parameter?
It’s a pity we can’t bill our customers per byte – we’d make a fortune!
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