Creating a development environment for SharePoint.

Question

Hi, I haven't touched sharepoint in years. If I want to setup a development environment to get up to speed, what options do I have? I don't have an MSDN license, is there anyway I can get up and running for free? (for development only)

Answer 1

There is no way you can have a MOSS 2007/WSS 3.0 development for free but a Microsoft Action Pact is so cheap to get. :)

There is a nice blog to read to get the requirements and the steps to get a full MOSS 2007 image up and running here : How to Create a MOSS 2007 VPC Image: The Whole 9 Yards.

Answer 2

You need a Windows 2003 Server (or 2008 Server, but I have no experience with that), no way around that. You can then of course use Visual C# 2005 Express and the SHarepoint Services 3.0 if that's your target.

If you want to do development on Sharepoint 2007, you have to buy a Sharepoint 2007 license, which has a pretty hefty fee attached to it.

As a SQL, SQL 2005 Express works fine for development.

There is a good Article how to set up Sharepoint on a Single Server:

http://blogs.msdn.com/martinkearn/archive/2007/03/28/how-to-install-sharepoint-server-2007-on-a-single-machine.aspx

You CAN use a Trial Version of Windows 2003 and Sharepoint 2007 though if it's only needed for a limited time (i believe the Trials run 180 days).

Answer 3

The action pack is fantastic value, you can use the Windows Server from that, as well as SharePoint Enterprise / Standard.

Answer 4

If you're just (re-)starting out in SharePoint development, there's a lot of value in just using WSS 3.0 and not (yet) using MOSS 2007. The basic vocabulary is going to be exactly the same at the development level, and you can accomplish a huge amount without ever feeling like you need MOSS to learn.

Answer 5

You could always download the Sharepoint trial VM here and then install the express version of visual studio.

Answer 6

You can download an Office SharePoint Server VHD from Microsoft. This allows you to run a virtual Windows Server & SharePoint Server on your personal machine using Virtual Server.

I recently went through this process and wrote a blog article describing how to setup a virtual Office SharePoint Server.