I've been pondering about the lack of a more efficent process for developing MOSS/WSS Solutions (I mean a solution to a business probelm and not a wsp) lately, because believe it or not, when your MOSS Solution contains more than just one component, e.g. WebParts, Features, ASPX pages, Workflows etc, there is no Solution template in Visual Studio where you can add all these project types and have them compile to a single wsp. Its kind of a pain to develop without this functionality.
Serge pointed me out to WSPBuilder by Carsten the other day (man was I so out of it :( ). But wait Rich Finn has done a number on the WSPBuilder and introduced it as a Visual Studio Template. Which should be a help, but doesnt really solve the problem of multiple projects.
So here is whats spinning around in my head. A Visual Studio Project type (Setup and Deployment or any other kind) which you can add to your Solution, and to which you will add references from your other projects. The project would be intelligent enough to determine the output type of the referred projects and place the output in the appropriate folder structure as per WSPBuilder, and on compile time call wsp builder.
I think its an interesting idea that would ease a bit of pain from the developent chores involved with MOSS Solutions, but implementing it might be a bit of a challenge.
Does anyone else have any other ideas? or recommendations/tips on this or how they go about developing MOSS/WSS Solutions.
Cross-posted from tariqayad.com