As a relative newcomer to DNN and the Events module, I'm having a few problems setting up a buildable project from Events_04.00.01_Source.zip (from the dnnevents site)

1. I note that there is a Resources.zip nested within the main zip-file. Why was this included as a separate zip-file and where in the build-tree should these additional files be unzipped to (e.g. the module root directory or a particular subdirectory)? When do you need / not need the additional files in Resources.zip? (presumably if you always need them there would not have been any need to make a separate zip file??).

2. Some files in the main zip-file seem to have been placed in the wrong subdirectory - e.g. 03.01.00.SqlDataProvider, etc, have been placed in the project root directory in the main zip-file but seem to need manually moving to Providers\DataProviders\SqlDataProvider after unzipping the build tree in order to satisfy the DotNetNuke.Events.SqlDataProvider project which otherwise reports broken file links when loaded into Visual Studio. What's going on here?

3. The DotNetNuke.Events project _Install folder has two files in the project (DnnModule.build.xml and DnnModuleManifest.dnn) which appear as broken links in the project. I suspect these maybe generated files?? Is that why they appear broken, or have i missed something? It's not at all clear (see point 6 below).

4. Is it necessary to use VS2008 to build this project, or is VS2005 sufficient? I saw a note somewhere whilst looking on the dnnevents website that implied that VS2008 was required, but surprisingly in view of this I was able to load the project into VS2005, so I'm a bit confused on this point.

5. Can you build the events module without DNN being present - i.e. does the events module depend on or reference any files that are not in the zip files but are in the main DNN installation? If I try and load the events module solution and build in VS2008 without DNN present, I get loads of errors which look like missing references - does this mean I need DNN core assemblies as well as the files in the zip-file to make it work? An http:\\localhost\DnnEvents website was created in IIS when I tried to open the Events module solution file, but I cant run this site from IE (there are no aspx files or other web-pages in it) and its not clear which additional files I need to install to make it work.

6. I'd like to suggest some easy-to-read release-notes (e.g. a readme.txt) included with the source in the zip-file would make a newcomers life a bit less painful here - how about it? Many of the people attempting to build your code will, like me, not be at all familiar with the way you like to do things and it would be a generous move to include a few pointers for them, IMHO.

The content outside the Resources.zip is the basic installable module. The Resources file makes up the source. If you want to do code development you need the Resources file. This structure appears to be the standard format for building source code zip files. Note - this is an installable source. Therefore the fact that there are two zip files should be irrelevant to you, since you don't need to do any unzipping. To create a valid directory structure for developing against, just install the source PA in the same way you would install a normal module. It will unzip everything into the right place ready for you to develop against.

If you install the source as described above, everything will be placed in the correct directory. Again, no need to unzip yourself.

Not sure why this is, I'd have to get Ernst Peter to respond, but it shouldn't be big issue to you.

Yes you need VS2008, this is specifed in the Release Notes. Whilst you may be able to open it in VS2005 (I have to say I haven't tried), I suspect you will have further problems down the road.

Yes you need to be able to reference the core DNN files, this is true of the majority of modules I would expect, since the modules use many features of the core framework (security, display, time, etc, etc). Logically you will also need the core to be able to test, so this shouldn't be an issue, you only need the install version of DNN, not the source.

The Events module uses the same development procedures/structures as all core DNN modules, so it isn't neccesarily appropriate for this team to develop a guide in isolation to the other modules. Michael Washington creates some excellent guides to module development on his site - http://www.adefwebserver.com/DotNetNukeHELP/. Also I believe there are books available on this subject, including one (I forget the name) based on the Events module (though an older version of the module). So hopefully there should be enough material out there to guide you.

Hope this helps.

Roger

Fuji,

Many thanks - your blog looks excellent, will go through it carefully.

One general problem is that there is often help of this sort somewhere on the web, but its scattered around and can be hard to find unless you are in the know. Sometimes my Googling comes up trumps, sometimes you miss something useful. How about maybe collecting useful links together and putting them on a page on the events module site, perhaps?