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

Answer 1

I'm Jonas from Bamboo that created the setup helper. Here is why I did it and how I use it.

I 100% agree that virtualization is the way to go when you are testing your solutions. You CAN NOT test a solution on Windows Vista since we don't KNOW how running on Windows Vista will affect the solution. I will go one step further you MUST test your solution in a REAL farm environment.

1) SQL Server on a dedicated box. (Double hop) 2) Multiple front end web servers. (state, deployment...) 3) Different language packs and different language for the OS Time zones you name it. 4) ??? fill in the gap ???

BUT sitting and developing running unit tests debugging in a virtual environment was killing me... It was too slow. You need fast feedback. So either you develop, debug and test with WSS/MOSS on Windows Vista or you install Windows 2003 or Windows Server 2008 and your development environment don't develop in a VM unless you have enough hardware (and I run a quad core 8 GB RAM machine).

Happy coding!