SharePoint 2010: Change the default Feature installation location from Visual Studio

In SharePoint 2007, we used to put the custom features in folder “12\TEMPLATE\FEATURES”. In SharePoint 2010, feature management is mostly done by Visual Studio 2010 UI. We mostly don’t care where the features are installed. However, with surprise I noticed that the feature is installed in the Features folder but not directly under the Features folder. Visual Studio creates a new folder under “14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES” folder and copy the features under that new folder.The name is in the format “VisaulStudioProjectName_FeatureName”. The name comes from feature’s properties and you can change the format. The following image shows the feature properties defining the naming format.

Figure 1: Feature deployment path in properties window

Now if you want to put the features just directly under the ‘14\Template\Feature’ folder, then just the set the ‘Deployment Path’ property value to '

$SharePoint.Feature.FileNameWithoutExtension$

 

Maybe sometimes you want to install the feature just under Features folder and in that case changing the deployment path will be helpful.