I am a huge fan of my Macbook Pro and whilst I run both OS X and Windows 10 concurrently (via Bootcamp through Parallels) I want to do as much work in the best tools possible. I think most people will agree that SharePoint Designer is rarely the best tool and when working on branding projects it’s still easier to edit files (such as Javascript files) directly from their locations in SharePoint.
I don’t want a full discussion around Source Control Management, so lets put that aside for now and I’ll just show you how you can edit your SharePoint files in VS Code on your Mac… and slam the door shut on SharePoint Designer.
1. Map a WebDav drive to SharePoint.
Yes, that is right. You can map a WebDAV drive to SharePoint. I need to add a thank you to Andrew Connell for planting this seed in a separate conversation.
Just fire up a new Finder window.
Enter the server URL. In this case I am pointing it straight at Style Library folder in an on-premises SharePoint server (that is hosted in Azure and publicly visible).
Click connect and do any authentication that you are asked to do.
Look! I have a drive mapped to a SharePoint library!
2. Visual Studio Code
Now that is done, I can simply fire up Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com), connect to the folder and start editing my files.
3. aaaaaannnnd reconnect
At the moment, my only gripe with this is that it seems to disconnect every couple of minutes, so when I come to save changes I have to go into Finder and reconnect. I am hoping I can find a way to make it more persistent.
If you know how, feel free to let me know in the comments!
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