Requirements for Developing SharePoint Solutions
You must install the following prerequisites on the system before you can use the SharePoint solution development tools included in Visual Studio:
Visual Studio Professional or an edition of Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management (ALM).
- Either the Visual C# or Visual Basic feature, or both, when installing Visual Studio.
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 installed on 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2.
or
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 installed on 64-bit Windows Server 2008 or 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2.
Note
While only server operating systems are officially supported by SharePoint, two client operating systems are allowed: Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP1. For more information, see SharePoint Server 2010 Developer Workstation Installation Guide.
Business Data Connectivity (BDC) Model project types require that Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 be installed on the system.
To develop SharePoint solutions in Visual Studio, you must install SharePoint on the same machine as Visual Studio. Also, the SharePoint developer tools only support a SharePoint standalone configuration; they do not support a farm (remote) configuration.
Note
SharePoint projects in Visual Studio support only .NET Framework 3.5. If you select .NET Framework 4 for a new SharePoint project, it will still target .NET Framework 3.5.
For more information about how to install Visual Studio, see Installing Visual Studio.
Vista and Windows 7 User Account Control (UAC)
Windows Vista and Windows 7 incorporate a security feature that's known as User Account Control (UAC). To develop SharePoint solutions in Visual Studio on Windows Vista and Windows 7 systems, UAC requires that you run Visual Studio as a system administrator. On the desktop, open the shortcut menu for Visual Studio, and then choose Run as administrator.
To configure the desktop shortcut to always run as administrator, open its shortcut menu, choose Properties, choose the Advanced button, and then select the Run as administrator check box.
For more information, see Understanding and Configuring User Account Control in Windows Vista. and Windows 7 User Account Control.
SharePoint Permissions Considerations
To develop SharePoint solutions, you must have sufficient permissions to run and debug SharePoint solutions. Before you can test a SharePoint solution, take the following steps to ensure that you have the necessary permissions:
Add your user account as an Administrator on the system.
Add your user account as a Farm Administrator for the SharePoint server.
In SharePoint Central Administration, choose the Manage the farm administrators group link.
On the Farm Administrators page, choose the New button.
Add your user account to the to the WSS_ADMIN_WPG group.