Quirks of the CKSDev Tools when Working with MasterPages

The CKSDev tools are a splendid toolset for SharePoint 2010 development. As I mostly create branding solutions, I use the Quick Deploy (Copy to SharePoint root) command for a quick and easy deploy without the tiresome iisresets and resulting reload delays etc. that come with the real deploy.

Most of the time this works perfectly, but in some cases I have noticed that it for some reason cannot update the MasterPage and PageLaouts files, but still works for the stylesheets and images. 

The other tool that comes in handy for me, mostly, is the Starter Master Page module. Mostly, I say, for this has a couple of issues. First, though, the reasons I still often prefer to use it for MasterPages rather than an empty module are

• the included starter.master (by Randy Drisgill)
• the better form of the Elements.xml, that is, it contains all the necessary properties for MasterPages ready made
• most of the time the cranky VisualStudio html intellisense for MasterPages works with a bigger probability than when adding MasterPages in an empty module

The quircks are related to this feature not being a proper SharePoint module, but was designed for one MasterPage only and thus

• you either need to create a new StarterMasterPage "module" with its own Elements.xml file for each new MasterPage
• or you need to do a bit of manual work

The manual work required:

1. the name you give the MasterPage when creating it as a new item, names both the "module" and the MasterPage file. E.g. if you name it MasterPages, then rename the MasterPage file and then you need to change the name of the file in the Elements.xml
2. if you add new MasterPage files to the "module", you need to add it to the Elements.xml file yourself (this is easily done by copy-pasting) and set the Deployment Type property for it as ElementFile