Using a Team Site as the target site when building a SharePoint App in Visual Studio

Question

I always thought that you had to use the Developer Site Template for the site you used for debugging when building a SharePoint App. I just tried on two different machines using VS 2015, 2013 and 2012 and I was able to run and debug a SharePoint-Hosted App that targeted a Team Site in a SharePoint 2013 on-prem environment. I got an "Sideloading of apps is not enabled on this site" error when I tried to do the same thing against a Team Site in SharePoint Online. Anyone know what the difference is?

Please note, I'm not asking how I can use a Team Site instead of a Developer Site in SharePoint Online, I'm asking why there is a difference in the way Visual Studio deploys apps between SharePoint on-prem and SharePoint Online and ideally, what that difference is.

Answer 1

Probably the best reference on this is here:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/officeapps/2013/12/10/enable-app-sideloading-in-your-non-developer-site-collection/

Basically, there is a method called at the site collection to determine whether side loading is turned on.

Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.AppCatalog.IsAppSideloadingEnabled

For SharePoint online, you will need to enable it.

You might double check your local environments and see if the feature is already enabled there.

Enable-SPFeature e374875e-06b6-11e0-b0fa-57f5dfd72085 -url http://yoururl.com

Maybe it was already enabled on your local site collections?