.net - SharePoint development environment setup

Question

i need to setup a development environment for writing Share Point Web Parts. What do I exactly need?

My development machine is a Windows XP Prof. with Visual Studio 2008 Prof. If found Windows Share Point Services 3.0: Software Development Kit (SDK) and Windows Share Point Services 3.0: Tools Visual Studio 2008 Extensions, Version 1.2. But i cannot install it ob Windows XP because Share Point Services 3.0 are required to be installed locally. I can not imagine that it is really necessary to install Visual Studio at a Server Operating System.

Is there any other way to setup a clean development environment under Windows XP and using a dedicated Windows Server for running Share Point Services?

Answer 1

I highly recommend using a VM. SharePoint is big. It requires multiple servers and lots of services. Basically its guaranteed to slow down any workstation you install it on. Other benefits of using a VM to develop:

• Undo disks
• Moving your dev environment from workstation to workstation
• easy back-ups

This is a pretty comprehensive guide to building a full featured SharePoint VM: http://www.pptspaces.com/sharepointreporterblog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=7537e639%2Db4e5%2D48b6%2D97c0%2Da75e44ee9be3&ID=28&Source=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Epptspaces%2Ecom%2Fsharepointreporterblog%2FLists%2FPosts%2FAllPosts%2Easpx

Although, if you are going to be doing a lot of SharePoint development I would build a parent VM with the OS, SharePoint, and database. Then create a child VM (differential disk) with dev tools (VS 2008, Office 2007, SharePoint Designer). That way, you can always roll back to a clean SharePoint environment if you need to.

Furthermore, I think the best way to do serious solution development is to spend the time and learn how to build your own solution files, and rolling your own features. NANT can be used to great effect for this. The existing crop of automated tools have limitations that you will inevitably run up against if you are doing anything a bit complicated.

Learning all of the moving parts of solution development is a bit daunting, but once you do it gives you a MUCH better picture of what SharePoint is doing under the covers.