Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on Tue 07 Apr 2009

Ok…so you have a perfectly good development machine and need to develop web parts or other Microsoft SharePoint items.  Microsoft have released Visual Studio extensions for WSS but we all know “you dont develop on a server”.  So you are left with two options, run a virtual machine - which when you bog down with SQL, SharePoint and Visual Studio will run slower than a sloth thats fallen asleep or try to trick the visual studio extensions to work on your pc.

Its actually a lot easier than you think to get the VSe’s working on your pc than you think.

Disclaimer: this involved working on your registry.  If you dont feel comfortable editing your registry walk away now and get yourself a virtual machine.

• Open Regedit as an administrator.
• navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0] - if any of these keys dont exist then you will have to create them.
• Add a string value “Sharepoint”=”Installed”

Run the VSeWSS available from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7BF65B28-06E2-4E87-9BAD-086E32185E68&displaylang=en

You will notice that we have now tricked the VSeWSS to thinking you have WSS installed on your pc.

Now…to make things even easier, download and install WSS deploy from http://wssdeploy.codeplex.com/ which will allow you to code and deploy more easily from your desktop without having to play around copying files, installing to GAC, carry out IISResets etc.

Happy Coding.