Recycling SharePoint 2010 app pool from Visual Studio

One of the things I liked about WSPBuilder was the ability to easily recycle the application pool from Visual Studio, much quicker then messing around with IISReset or IIS manager. With the new deployment framework in Visual Studio 2010, we don’t have that functionality anymore. It’s all very much about deployment. While there are benefits to this approach, sometimes when you’re messing around with stuff it’s good to be able to copy a file to the SPRoot folder, recycle the app pool and see what happens.

This is just a quick post, more for my memory than anything else, on how to add a command to Visual Studio to recycle a particular app pool.

1. In Visual Studio 2010, from the Tools menu, select External Tools
2. Click on Add to add a new tool (A tool is effectively a menu option that points to an external tool)
3. Set the Title to something descriptive (maybe Recycle SharePoint App Pool?)
4. Set the Command to: C:WindowsSystem32inetsrvappcmd.exe
5. Set the Arguments to: recycle apppool /apppool.name:”Sharepoint – 80″
6. Check the Use Output window option.

Job done.