When you are engaged in SharePoint development under Windows Server 2008 you are limited in 3rd party tools, because not all tools are working there, for example you can't use Sharepoint Spy - it requests Windows Server 2003 only (actually you can run Sharepoint Spy by modifying MSI and removing Windows version check)

There are some other tools which support Windows 2008, one of this tools is "OCDExportList", as you could imply from its name it allows you to export the List Definitions.

OCDExportList is just STSADM extension which gives you list's schema xml . But, if you gonna use this schema xml in your feature deployment, you need to make some changes.

By default "OCDExportList" exports list with all views, like "AllItems.aspx" and etc, but actually in 90% cases you need to use standard views, and don't deploy custom ones. So, to deploy list and use standard views the following changes of list schema xml should be applied

1. Add SetupPath="pages\form.aspx" for each <Form> in <MetaData>/<Forms>
2. Find <View> ulr="AllItems.asxp" and change attributes

• add SetupPath="pages\viewpage.aspx"
• change "DisplayName" value on "$Resources:core,objectiv_schema_mwsidcamlidC24;"

After that, the deployed list will use standard views

Mirror: Export List Definition with OCDExportList and reusing standard Views