Deploying WSP, Sharepoint Version

Question

In my current environment we have SH 2010 RTM, and deployment works fine.

But in the near future there is going to be another farm, and in this one we would like to have it up to date with SP 1, all CUs, hotfixes, etc.

I suppose that developer VMs and its sharepoint versions, should match the versions otherwise SharePoint wont allow to deploy the WSPs. Is that correct?

So I suppose I have 2 options: 1. Leave the new farm in RTM 2. Upgrade the current FARM to SP1, and June 2012 CU. (do the same with developer VMs)

Answer 1

No it's not correct.

Nothing in the wsp is mentionning the version of SharePoint. If you look into the wsp file (it's a zip file, use any dezipper), you will see that's only Xml and dll files (+ some assets depending on the project).

You will be able to deploy the wsp file with no issue.

BUT

I highly recommend you to migrate the development environment to the same version than target platform. If you don't, you will have a risk to fall in a bug on previous service packs that have been solved in the latest release. Or you will have something that works on dev computer, but that does not works on production platform (Microsoft regression, raise security requirement, etc.).

In other words, reduce the risk of different behaviors by duplicating as nearly as possible the production environment.