Well folks, we're almost there, and not only that, we've reached a half century! This is blog 50 of one-blog-per-day-until-Christmas, and I aim to be consistent, so it's as incredibly obvious as the rest of them.
Now I'm sure you all know how to do this... but I wasn't aware of this functionality until recently even though there's a large button that indicates its existence.
First... I should explain what I'm trying to do: the essential task is to search within files in the 12 Hive. This is a common SharePoint development task, in response to questions such as "where is the feature with GUID x defined", or "what features are stapled to site definition Y"?
Here's some of the ways you might achieve this:
- Download an application that searches inside files.
- Use the (unreliable) built-in windows "search in files" option.
- Install a desktop search utility that indexes and then rapidly returns results within files.
- Use a command line grep tool or similar.
- Manually open and scan every single file until you find what you're looking for (yeah, right!)
I've previously used a Windows app "Windows Grep" to do this, and its pretty fully featured. However, the "obvious" method I was missing previously is a lot more accessible for us devs, and my new search method of choice. Here it is:
- Open Visual Studio
- Hit Ctrl-Shift-F, or choose Edit -> Find And Replace -> Find In Files
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Hit the "..." button next to "Look In":
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Browse to the 12 hive in the "Available Folders" section of the resulting dialog, then click ">":
- Give your folder set a name such as "12 Hive", and click "OK"
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Search away as normal:
The cool thing about this is that the Folder Set now stays in your "Look In" list forever.
Yours in obviousness,
:) Matt