SharePoint 2010 Prerequisites for Development Environment

As I was reviewing  the document “Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint 2010 on Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008” which can be found here. I discovered some interesting information and script that I believe is valuable and worth sharing with you all. There are a number of hotfixes, .Net framework, ASP.Net and Service Pack updates that need to be installed, referenced, and available, depending on the OS version of your SharePoint development.  The good news is, SharePoint does include a PrerequisiteInstalle.exe tool that installs all the prerequisites you are using in Windows Server 2008.   Which in most cases, are not in a standard development machine. Now the bad news—if you are using Windows 7 or Vista  as your development OS, the PrerequisiteInstalle.exe tool does not work.  This leaves additional configuration steps and required several downloads, in order to get SharePoint installed. However, there is a handy PowerShell script  “Download SharePoint 2010 Pre-Requisites” that can be found here, which downloads the prerequisites to a folder for an offline installation of SharePoint 2010 or in my case, as an extra step for “good measure” to  confirm that nothing was missed. The PowerShell script uses BitTransfer so you can see the status of each download.  As shown below using PowerGUI. You could also modify the “Download SharePoint 2010 Pre-Requisites” PowerShell script for other prerequisites software installation or configuration.  If you are getting started or need to setup SharePoint development environments, I would highly recommend reviewing the ALM Resource Center | SharePoint 2010 site. It has a number of useful links and resources.  Also, check out our new SharePoint ALM Health Check offering that provides an independent review of your SharePoint development practices.