Potential creation of too many columns

[david-orc]

If an existing column exists a new one is made anyways, this can be problematic with multiple migrates and rollbacks and could result in a number of repeated columns. (i.e. If I go to add a column named Blah and one exists it will go right ahead and make Blah1)

One potential fix is to have a clean-up script that removes all site columns that arent attached to any content type.

[kyleschaeffer]

We'd have to tread very carefully here, because this is the default behavior of SharePoint when you do this through the UI as well. We would need to make sure we don't delete any out-of-the-box SharePoint columns when cleaning up, which I suppose could be accomplished through a new manifest list (like we do with the content type manifest).

[david-orc]

Brute force cleanup suggestion came from doing this locally and realizing I wouldn't mind deleting all site columns/content types not attached to anything (mass cleanup of my battered local environment). Any time you're hitting a giant delete button I agree we should be scared of deleting the wrong things, but I got here out of rollback accidentally trying to delete the pre-existing site column with the name I was trying to use for a new one (already scary).

I haven't played around enough to see if there is returned info that tells me a Name already exists but the Manifest route sounds like a good one to check out.