Creating WSS Solution Packages for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

I am assuming you have done custom development for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Whether it was a custom web part, workflow, event handler, feature, or module, at some point you probably had to figure out how to deploy it. If you are like me and learn a lot of what you know by doing, then you probably had to fiddle with web.config files and debugging errors with code access security exceptions. This post takes a stroll through a couple of ways to build and bundle a WSP file (a WSS solution package) and deploy it.

Before I begin, you should know that what assumptions I am making about the environment:

• The developing environment is running Windows Server 2003.
• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is installed.
• Visual Studio 2005 is installed.
• Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is installed (it is possible to create a WSP file with out this and I will cover it later in this post, but be aware that it is much more time consuming)

A Simple WSP Solution Package

I will update this post with a walk through of creating a simple WSP solution package using the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 in the near future.