Blackbaud SDK in Visual Studio 2015.md

Templates

These are the items used to generate new projects and specs.
You will find a ProjectTemplates and ItemTemplates folders in the SDK directory.

Project Templates

1. Navigate to your C:\<username>\Documents\Visual Studio 2015\Templates\ProjectTemplates folder.
2. Create a new Blackbaud AppFx folder here.
3. Copy the conents of BlackbaudSDK\ProjectTemplates to your new Blackbaud AppFx folder.

Item Templates

1. Navigate to your C:\<username>\Documents\Visual Studio 2015\Templates\ItemTemplates folder.
2. Copy the contents of BlackbaudSDK\ItemTemplates here.
3. By convention, I would suggest prefixing Blackbaud AppFx to the folders just coppied into Visual Studio 2015\Templates\ItemTemplates.

Schemas

This provides intellisense and validation when writing specs. There are a few ways we could make this work, but I will provide the method that the SDK installer would normally perform.

1. Navigate to your %VSINSTALLDIR%\Xml\Schemas folder.
2. Find catalog.xml and open it in a text editor.
3. Place <Catalog href="C:\BlackbaudSDK\Schemas\VSSchemaCatalog.xml"/> above the </SchemaCatalog> tag (Note: The path to your VSSchemaCatalog.xml will be different.).

Referencing BlackbaudSDK\VSSchemaCatalog.xml in this way will tell Visual Studio to check your SDK directory for XSD files when working with XML.

DLL Install

The DLL files in BlackbaudSDK\Tools should be copied to %VSINSTALLDIR%\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies.

Visual Studio Commands

Command line calls can be registered in Visual Studio as External Tools.

LoadSpec

1. From Visual Studio select Tools -> External Tools...
2. Click Add
3. Command: D:\BlackbaudSDK\Tools\LoadSpec.exe
4. Arguments: /s=<SERVERNAME> /db=<DBNAME> /spec=$(ItemPath) /nodepends
5. Check Use Output Window

UnloadSpec

Use the same settings as for LoadSpec but change the Title and add /u to the end of your Argument string