SharePoint 2013 Best Practices: Setting Up a Dev Environment for Windows Apps and SharePoint

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General Overview

You'll need at least 2 machines: a server running SPS 2013 (and SQL Server, Active Directory, 2013 Workflow Services, etc) and a Windows 8 client. Ideally, both machines are on the same domain.

SharePoint Server

Preferably, use Windows Server 2012 to install  SharePoint Server 2013 (otherwise Windows Server 2008 R2) and give it 24 GB of memory or more. See http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15289.sharepoint-2013-best-practices-creating-a-development-environment.aspx for more info on setting up an SPS 2013 dev environment.

Client

You need to have a client that runs Windows 8, either on a virtual machine or on the host OS. Preferably, use Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise.

Connect the machine to the same domain.  Install Visual Studio 2012 on it
Make sure it has 2 GB - 4 GB of memory

It needs an Internet connection.

Programming

You need to decide in which language you write the App. The following choices are available:

  • HTML 5 and JavaScript
  • XAML with C# (or other .NET languages)
  • DirectX with native C++ and HSL

Credits

Content originally based on SharePoint Conference 2012 presentation "Bringing SharePoint to the Desktop" by Corey Roth.

See Also

Go to the SharePoint 2013 Best Practices page at http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/12438.sharepoint-2013-best-practices.aspx