SharePoint Development on Windows 7 - sharepoint

I am about to install SharePoint Foundation for development purposes on my Windows 7 x64.
I will be using Visual Studio 2010.
Beside other things, MS site says:
If you use Windows 7 or Windows Vista for your development environment, you should have access to a test environment that has the same operating system installed as your production environment.
I am not sure what does it exactly mean by "you should have access to test environment"?
Will I be able to compile, run debug and test web parts and other stuff?
Are there any significant limitations for Win 7 and SP Foundation for development?

Since SharePoint production OS should be win2008+ by saying "the same operating system" they mean win2008+, neither win7 or Vista should be used as testing servers. This passage means that there should be another server that will be win 2008 and will host SharePoint and this server should be the one you should test your solutions on.
p.s. yes. there are some low level differences between sharepoint hosted on win7 and win 2088. but you will be able to do all the stuff you want on win 7 too.

Related

Differences between Win7 IIS and Win2008 R2 IIS?

I am specing out new development workstations for my team and I am running into a conflict. I am a developer and I want Windows Server 2008 R2 because that is what our production servers are running. The IT guys want to give us Windows 7 because that is where they have tested all their infrastructure.
My question is this: is there enough of a difference between the two to push for 2008 R2? I know MSFT has crippled IIS in previous versions of Windows unless it was the server edition so I am skeptical about Win7 giving me what we need.
You can use Windows 7 for your development machines and have one Windows Server 2008 R2 for UAT deployments. This way you can have the best of both worlds. IT will be happy that you are all running Windows 7 and you will be happy that you're able to test your application in windows server 2008.
This question answer might be helpful.
Differences between Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
Your IT guys are correct aside from licensing issues such cost as Office without workstation on OpenValue, OpenSelect etc.. (remember they are packaged together) etc.. there are hardware issues and compatibility with future software.
There is no way you need 2008 R2 Server, do you want to work in the data center too? or have a full copy of the live database? You should have a CI server though that represents the live environment , the IT guys should provide this for you - probably as a VM.

SharePoint Web Parts Development Environment

I know there are so many questions and articles on this topic and I have searched hours and hours on the Internet so far, but I still couldn’t find the right answer for my question. I was assigned the task to investigate the development environment for SharePoint web parts by my company. The money is not an issue but it must be the proper way to do it.
Here is my ideal plan: at developer desktop, install VS2005/2008 (it is already installed), VS2005/2008 Extension for SharePoint and WSPBuilder. It is also installed a Virtual Machine and the VM runs windows server 2003/2008. WSS3.0 and SQL Express 2005/2008 will be also installed on VM.
Developer’s desktop is a web parts development environment. Developers use VS to develop the SharePoint web parts and then run the WSPBuilder, it will deploy the web parts into the SharePoint testing environment on VM. So the VM is just a SharePoint testing environment.
It looks like a good idea, however, it doesn’t work. Why? Because VS extension can't be installed on developer’s desktop as it doesn’t have WSS3.0 installed!
I definitely don’t want to install the VS on the VM, because our developer desktop has installed VS and we don’t need to have 2 VS licences for 1 developer.
Any idea what is the best way to set up the development environment for SharePoint web parts?
Thank you in advance.
You won't be able to develop for SharePoint (WSS 3.0) unless your development environment includes an installation of at least WSS. In general, development is done on a Windows Server 2003 Virtual Machine (Visual Studio is installed directly on this machine). However, SharePoint can be installed on Windows Vista and Windows 7 machines, so your development machine may be able to host SharePoint itself, but it is far easier to do this on a VM.
My SharePoint development VM has the following installed:
Windows Server 2003 R2
SharePoint 2007 (Including SQL 2005)
Visual Studio 2008
Visual Studio Tools for Office
Office Server SDK
Visual Studio Extensions for WSS 1.3
Obviously you can use WSPBuilder instead, but I much prefer VSSWSS 1.3, but that is developer preference.
I believe (should be verified with Microsoft) that the licensing for Visual Studio can be extended to Virtual Machines when used by the same developer (depending on your agreement).
An alternative for you which may or may not work depending on your priorities.
Install Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Foundation to your development server.
Grab a copy of Microsoft.SharePoint.dll from a SharePoint 2007 server.
Use VS2010's tools to develop a web part but manually change the reference to the 2007 dll's (+ also see "Build a SharePoint 2007 Web Part with a Visual Studio 2010 Visual Web Part Project") so you are outputing a 2007 compatible web part.
When you delploy your 2007 web part to your local 2010 server it will just work (as its backwardly compatible)
When you deploy your 2007 web part to your test/qa/production servers it will work too.
Advantages
You're working with latest greatest
version of VS and the sharepoint
tooling so you get one click deploy,
automatic creation of WSP packages
etc. Nothing against WSP Builder etc (they are great) but my moneys on vs2010 sharepoint extensions for the future.
You're ready if/when your
company moves to 2010.
You're developing on a Windows 7 machine, not a 2003/2008 server and or a VM so this has advantages for licensing, speed and ease of use (dual monitor support from VS running on a VM?)
Edit - to deploy web parts to other servers you create a .wsp package and then deploy via STSSADM or another tool (SharePoint solution installer or other admin tools).
I haven't used VSSWSS or WSPBuilder. I've always used STSDEV for SharePoint 2007. And I've always used Windows XP to do it. I don't know if VSSWSS and WSPBuilder act the same, but, as Ryan was saying, I copy whatever SharePoint DLLs I need from a SharePoint 2007 server into a Solution Folder in my Visual Studio solution. I then select Add Reference in my project and browse to the DLL.
In four years, I've never had any problems with this method. The solution packages build just fine and work on any SharePoint server. I lose the option to debug, but I'd rather stay on my machine than go into a VM or Remote Desktop.

Can I install and run SharePoint Server 2007 or 2010 on Windows 7 Professional?

Can I install and run SharePoint Server 2007 or 2010 on Windows 7 Professional?
Yes, it's a little obscure (the method to do it) but perfectly feasible. I have my development machine setup with windows 7 enterprise and SP 2010 using this MSDN article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869%28office.14%29.aspx
It must be a x64 os though. Ask away if I can help with anything else. (I found it very slow at first, then upgraded from 4 to 8gb ram)
Of course. I've installed SP 2007 on vista, but it's the same steps on win7 too. http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/bambooteamblog/archive/2008/05/21/how-to-install-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-sp1-on-vista-x64-x86.aspx
Happy SharePoint-ing

Sharepoint 2010 development on Windows XP 32-bit?

Possible or not?
I know Sharepoint 2010 Server won't even run on a client side of Vista/Windows 7 64-bit, forget about Windows XP 32-bit.
But if I can install and use Visual Studio 2010 on Windows XP just fine, shouldn't Sharepoint development tools also work on Windows XP 32-bit?
The thing is I have a very old laptop (from 2005) that doesn't even support 64-bit architecture so I am stuck with WinXP 32bit.
If there is any way at all of (Remote?) Sharepoint development on Windows XP 32-bit with VS2010 please let me know.
Most of what the developer tools offer you make two assumptions:
You are running on a 64-bit architecture
SharePoint is installed side-by-side with Visual Studio
Running on a 32-bit XP machine breaks these assumptions. Many of the built-in Visual Studio productivity aids, such as the deploy and retract commands, will fail. I couldn't even create a project using the SharePoint 2010 project template under similar conditions.
You might make some headway by using regular class library or web application projects, copying SharePoint .dll's from a server's GAC (for use as references) and by manually creating your .ddl and .wsp files using MakeCab (as I did with 2007, with a little help from PowerShell); however, it sounds excruciating compared to running on Vista SP2 X64 or Windows 7 X64 with SharePoint installed.
As per the above answer, VS 2010 SharePoint projects require a local installation of SharePoint. You can use external tools for doing your development, such as WSPBuilder, but I do not recommend this approach. You are best sticking to the MS tools.
Your options are:
Upgrade to Windows 7 x64 or Server 2008 R2
Run VMWare Server (free) which should enable you to run a 64-bit VM on a 32-bit host (I think? Not sure about this assumption actually), and create a VM with Win7 x64 or Win 2008 R2 for SP development.
You can use Win7 64bit as your dev environment
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx

Installing Sharepoint on Windows 7

I have Windows 7 installed on my laptop. I want to know what is the best way to install MOSS 2007 on my laptop?
I heard that MOSS 2007 can be directly installed on Windows 7. I want to know if there are ny problems if I do this
Or should I install Windows SErver 2008 on VM and then install MOSS 2007 on Windows Server 2008. Is it possible to install Windows Server 2008 VM on Windows 7??
Please let me know the best option...
MOSS 2007 can be installed on Windows Vista/7 but it's not supported and at your own risks (here is the link but it doesn't work righ now: http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/bambooteamblog/archive/2008/05/21/how-to-install-windows-sharepoint-services-3-0-sp1-on-vista-x64-x86.aspx)
It is possible to installed Windows Server 2008 on Windows 7, but you'll need a x64 version of 2008. You'll have to use VMWare or Virtual Sunbox which will need a lot of extra ressources.
Unless you have a really powerful computer, the best choice is a dual boot Win7 / Windows 2008.
Note: With SharePoint 2010, it is supported to install SharePoint directly on Windows 7.

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