2 Good blog postings on creating list definitons as features
1. Steven Van de Craen's attempt at customizing announcements (thats what I did too)
2. Tod Baginski's in depth analysis of creating list definintions.
But the major problem with the approach is CAML for the Views are pain to tinker with. Just absolutely chaotic, requiring a lot of patience, and if not done methodically would result in admitting yourself to a mental institution.
Now Mart gave me a tip yesterday (Mart you should really blog this.), which is you can extract the CAML from a list template (i.e. stp file). So the process would be, create the list in SharePoint, save it as a template, open the stp file in some cab viewer, extract CAML and use it in list definition.
Will keep you posted if I suceed in this.
tags: sharepoint, lists, definitions, features, templates