Do I need to have SharePoint 2013 installed on my local machine for web part development?

Question

We have a SharePoint 2013 server on a remote machine. Can I develop web parts without installing SP server on my development PC or VS2012 on the remote machine? There seem to be conflicting messages about this on various sites.

I simply want to be able to build my apps locally and deploy to SP2013. Is there an SP2013 "lite" solution that will help me achieve this on my dev machine?

Answer 1

..and, for WSP SharePoint 2013 solutions, SharePoint 2013 requires Windows 2008 R2, so your development workstation can't be Windows 7 ... so slap on some memory, stand up a 2008 VM and reinstall everything again. Not good - wish there were a better way for sure.

Answer 2

Yes, you can develop Apps for SharePoint 2013 without installing SharePoint itself. You will need to install the following:

• Install the Microsoft Web Platform Installer from http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx
• Install the SharePoint 2013 Development SDK from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35585

You will also need to set up an App Catalog for your SharePoint site to make use of the apps you create.

Note: If you want to develop solution (wsp) files then you will still need to have SharePoint installed on the dev machine.

Answer 3

In SP 2013, it is now available to develop apps without installing SP directly, using Visual Studio 2012. Please refer to this article

As noted:

With previous versions of the SharePoint tools in Visual Studio, developers had to install SharePoint Foundation or SharePoint Server locally before they could build SharePoint solutions in Visual Studio. This requirement increased the cost of development not only because more copies of SharePoint were needed but also because more capable systems were required to host them.

By using the SharePoint development tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 with Microsoft SharePoint 2013, however, you can create app for SharePoint solutions on a system by using a remote installation of SharePoint. You don't have to install SharePoint 2013 on your local system. This capability is known as remote development.