Setting up your SharePoint 2007 Development Environment

One of the problems with SharePoint development quite simply: you need SharePoint in order to develop. There is always the scenario where you take the DLLs from the SharePoint server, copy them to your XP machine and you tinker around until you get something manageable. I knew people that did this very thing, and they had extremely complex batch files that would deploy from their development machine, then they'd go to the SharePoint server, run iisreset, hit refresh, pray, and then wonder why they had so much trouble debugging.

First and foremost, you need Windows Server 2003 R2. If you can spare a physical box then that's an ideal situation just because of the sheer amount of crap you're going to install on this server, but I have used VMware and Virtual PC as well. If you're going the virtualization route, VMware seems to be the more robust solution and also seems to run much faster than VPC (and no, I don't work for VMware :)).

Second - install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition. You don't need to install Analysis Services or Reporting Services, but you might find yourself using Notification Services or the Service Broker at some point, so install Notification Services.

Thirdly, you need Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Don't bother installing WSS v3.0 without MOSS. As a developer, you want the full boat, and you'll need it for all the powerful enterprise features like Excel Services, the Business Data Catalog, etc. When you install this, do not install the standalone copy. You want to create a single-server farm and point your content and configuration databases at the SQL Server instance. The reason for this is that MOSS running on top of MSDE is quite possibly one of the most horribly performing application combinations I've ever seen, and your dev environment will screech to a grinding halt in Standalone mode.

Next, you need Visual Studio 2005 - at least Professional, but if you've got an MSDN subscription you might as well install the full boat. Also, if you're doing this for your company, you might want to consider installing the TFS client so you can check your SharePoint code in and out of Team Foundation Server. That's right - I actually said there was a good way of source-controlling SharePoint code - something that has been lacking in all previous versions of it.

So, to recap, setting up your development environment involves the following, in this order:

Prep your environment - either set up your VM or format your physical box
Install Windows Server 2003 R2 , make sure you include the latest service pack
Configure your server as an application server
Install IIS
Install the SMTP service
Install Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
Install Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 runtime. Feel free to install the SDK too.
Install Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2005 not in standalone mode!!!
Install Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
Optionally install the Team Explorer client to allow you to get source control access for all your SharePoint code
Install the SharePoint Extensions for WSS v3.0 from Microsoft. These will give you VS templates for web parts that are priceless for Web Part developers, as well as some stuff for doing solutions, features, and even site definitions. Get these!
Install the Enterprise Content Management Starter Kit from Microsoft. Its not currently available in anything other than beta 2 format, but it should be released any day now. This is the toolkit that contains the VS 2005 templates for creating real workflows, not the one-off instanced workflows you create with SharePoint Designer 2007.
You will also want to find some migration path from your environment to a staging or testing environment, but the rest of those details are specific to your organization and your environment. If you create your SharePoint environment using the preceding steps and resign yourself to knowing the fact that you will be developing on Windows Server 2003 for all of your SharePoint work (unless you're doing Web Services, in which case any client environment will do) - then you should be off and running.



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