Environment setting & development tools for my SharePoint 2013 project

Question

I want to start my first SharePoint project to build internal and external systems.

So I am preparing to get the following to set the development environment and to publish live SharePoint applications:

1. SharePoint Server 2013 Standard edition. As for now we do no need the enterprise features such as e-discover, BI, branding, etc.

2. Windows server 2012 & IIS as the operating system and hosting server respectively.

3. SQL server 2012 or 2008 for the database

4. Visual studio professional 2012 to develop web parts and use SharePoint templates.

5. Team foundation server 2012 to provides versioning control, bug tracing, etc.

So can anyone advice if I am missing any tools or software that are needed to develop and implement live internet & intranet SharePoint applications.

Second question should I use office 365 in my case?

Answer 1

we have started to implment 2013 project too. Here are some tools to be able to develop the project:

1. Office 2013 VS templates to install SharePoint 2013 templates to be able to create projects. You can find it here
2. As 2013 is new so to track some changes done inside the SP structure can be done using "SharePoint Manager 2013"
3. As always a good tool is a "ULS Viewer" - alows you to track logs
4. If you are using SVN for code "AnkhSvn-2.4" tool is useful. This should be version 2.4 or grater to be integrated inside VS2012.
5. I have also used ".NET Reflector" version 8 which can be integrated to VS and will allow you to debug even SP code (this is a payed version)
6. To reflect SP libraries you can also use " ILSpy" which is free.

What about configuration it depends on your requirements. Here are Microsoft SP2013 system requirements.

For my developmenet environment I have done a stand-alone farm with separate SQL server, domain controller, SP installed. All this with 16 GB of RAM and runnig on VirtualBox. It works greate.

UPDATED:

I have followed this official Microsoft's guide to install clean environment.

Hope it helps,

Andrew

Answer 2

I'm also developing on exactly the system you are going to use.

• First of all, I ran into some performance issues when more than 1 person was working at the same time. Personally I think, each developer needs at least 4GB of ram for basic use (for 2 persons 8gb works). Right now we have 16GB and it works like a charm - personal experience.
• You definitely need a sharepoint designer (Sharepoint designer 2010 - 32bit)
• Personally, I like the Productivity power tools(Tools -> Extension and updates -> Productivity power tools 2012) for visual studio 2012 which makes developing in VS much more easier

I cannot answer the question which office you should take, I'm also looking for an answer for this :)