I have tried this many times. Every single time I get some problem or the other - Management Studio Express setup tells me .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 is missing in Windows 7!! or unable to create user instance or, blend SDK didn't install properly or default settings of Visual Studio are screwed up or unable to remove visual studio, unable to add/remove features.. you name it, I've seen the problem.
Finally I decided - I am going to start fresh. This time no mistakes.
This is what I have now - a fresh installation of Windows 7 Ultimate.
This is what I will have - authorization to buy any software suite needed (as long as I don't go back and say "you know what, we should have bought that suite!") from my employer. Why no IT dept? because we are not that big except for loads of money in my employer's pocket.
We're starting up and I don't know into what domains we will expand so I want to cover all possible cases - Desktop - WinForms, WPF, Websites, Web apps, Mobile, DirectX (PC,XBOX360), good old Win32 stuff, maybe even assembly - basically most types of app you can possibly build. Please don't come up with "why don't you set this up after you decide what you are gonna work on", because that is out of the question for a particular reason.
I have the following list in mind -
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team System
- Microsoft SQL Server Developer Edition
- Windows Mobile 6 SDK (Standard and Professional)
- DirectX SDK - August 2009 (I believe it is the latest)
- Microsoft Expression Studio 3
What I am not sure about is -
IIS 7 - is it needed for the development environment? We might be developing web apps that will have to scale to thousands of concurrent users. Or is the built-in server enough? The thing is, when I ask some doubt about ASP.Net apps, the solution will be about tweaking IIS to enable/disable something. Can I do that if I use the built-in server that comes with VS? Is the one that comes with Windows 7 enough? Please enlighten me about IIS 7.
Code versioning system?
Question 1: What else is needed for the scenario explained above?
Previously I was a small time developer and I got away with the Express versions. Now its getting big.
The main thing I want to know is, the pre-requisities, dependencies and importantly - the order in which I have to install these.
It will be nice if someone or many people who have worked on such a hefty dev environment can give suggestions about best practices and guidelines to properly get this environment setup. So...
Question 2: What is the proper (or best) way to setup the above environment (including any other software that others might recommend).