Best practice for easy deployment of multiple solutions

Question

One of our product will consist of multiple SharePoint solutions. Now we're wondering what would be the best way to provide an easy deployment to our customers? At the moment we deploy each solution by hand, which is OK during development process but not acceptable for our customers.

For your information, we're using VSeWSS 1.3 for development and solution packaging.

So how do you offer your solutions to your customers? Do you write installation scripts using STSADM commands? What other options do we have?

Answer 1

I would ship a .zip file which contains

1. solution1.wsp
2. solution2.wsp
3. solution3.wsp
4. install.bat
5. readme.txt

install.bat performs the deployment of the solutions by making calls into STSADM.EXE

Answer 2

We have build a complete framework in PowerShell for deploying solution packages, with pre-/post-configuration events, definition of relation between modules, rollback (if implemented in callouts) and even partial updates.

It basicly wraps STSADM but adds the possibility of configuring stuff before or after modules are deployed (like setting up BDC application and rights programmatically before deploying custom BDC web parts).

It was alot of work, but the result is pretty nifty.

Anders Rask

Answer 3

Build your WSP and grab a copy of SharePoint Solution Installer. It will allow you to provide a EULA and several options. Customers just click setup.exe.

Answer 4

Wsps with a batch file. this batch file will use stsadm commands to add and deploy solution. also feature activation can be specified in the batch file.