Look alive. Here comes a buzzard.

I’d like to take a few moments for some shameless self promotion.  Yesterday I was happy to release Sublime 1.0.  Sublime is a Subversion management application designed for Microsoft-centric environments.

Subversion is an excellent SCM tool – arguably the leading SCM tool available today. But with its roots firmly in the open source / linux community, there aren’t a lot of Windows-based applications for managing subversion.  Tools like VisualSVN server make it easy to install and configure Subversion, but it requires access to the server for management.  Web-based Subversion apps can be found, but they are often built in PHP and may not fit with a “Microsoft Shop’s” IT strategy.

Sublime was designed for exactly these reasons.  Sublime provides a web-based management tool for your Subversion infrastructure.  It allows users to browse and create repositories, manage permissions, and enable email alerts all from a simple web interface.  Server administrators can configure automated backups, manage users and groups, and monitor server health all from a web browser.  The Sublime installer will automatically install Subversion if required making the setup process extremely fast and simple.

Ultimately, Sublime makes it easy for dev teams to use Subversion without any bottlenecks.  Users don’t have to wait for IT to create repositories, users can manage their own password, repository owners can manage permissions, etc.  At the same time, IT has the ability to manage the server and ensure data is backed up all within a Windows-based environment they are familiar with.  Everybody’s happy

I’m super excited about this release.  If you use Subversion today, or are thinking of moving to Subversion from a different SCM tool (or *gasp* no SCM tool), then I would encourage you to take a look at the Sublime website for more information.

Okay.  Plug over.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

One of my biggest complaints about SharePoint 2007 is that as a developer, it is virtually impossible to employ professional development techniques when building SharePoint solutions.  I’m talking about source control, continuous integration, test driven development, etc.  Obviously you can use these techniques when it comes to custom web parts, event receivers, and other “code only” solutions, but when you’re talking about larger projects that include content types, SharePoint Designer workflows, custom lists, in addition to custom code, it simply isn’t practical to try and cram everything into source control.  It’s just too much effort.

From what I’ve seen so far, many of these issues will be resolved with SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010.  I’m looking forward to digging into a real project so I can find out where the “gotchas” are (and I’m sure there will be plenty), but so far I’m optimistic.  I am hopeful that as a developer, I will be able to bring professional development techniques to all areas of a SharePoint project.

In my opinion this is critical if Microsoft wants to make SharePoint a true application development platform.

I’ve been wrestling with this error off and on for a while now.  It shows up in the event log of a production MOSS server I help manage.  Here is the error message:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Office SharePoint Server
Event Category: Publishing
Event ID: 5165
Date: 8/4/2009
Time: 12:57:51 PM
User: N/A
Computer: SERVER
Description:
Console Configuration File Error: File Not Found: The system cannot find the file specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0×80070002)
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

Googling for this error provides some information, but nothing definitive.  After turning up the logging level for the Publishing category, I was finally able to find enough information to locate the root cause.

This problem occurs when you are using a Master Page referencing SharePoint Publishing controls in a site collection that does not have the Publishing Infrastructure feature activated.  In my case, I was using a Master Page with the Publishing Console control on the page.  This Publishing Console was looking for some files in the Master Page gallery (_catalogs/masterpage/EditingMenu/CustomEditingMenu.xml etc) which don’t exist if the Publishing Infrastructure is not activated.  After I activated the Publishing Infrastructure, the errors went away.

However, ultimately the real solution was to remove the publishing features from the Master Page since I wasn’t using them anyway.

This problem came about when we re-used the master page from our main intranet on users’ My Sites.  Since the My Site doesn’t use the publishing features, every time someone hit a my site, these errors would show up in the event log.