Professional SharePoint® 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007

4.2. Overview of WSS Solution Packages

Developers writing custom code and creating files for use within a WSS 2.0 site were left with the challenges of deploying their custom code and files to SharePoint servers in homegrown ways. Some developers used the manual deployment of copying files around and making manual edits to the web.config file. Others created scripts or installers that did everything for them, but these were tedious to build and did not cleanly integrate with the SharePoint framework — basically, they were simply scripted actions working with the object model and running STSADM.EXE batch commands. Deployment of Web Parts in WSS 2.0 was a little better, as it included a tool that helped package up the files for deployment. Called the Web Part Packager, this tool proved to be a bit buggy and Microsoft eventually pulled support for it.

Fortunately, Microsoft expended considerable effort in this area in WSS 3.0 with the addition of the solution framework and WSS solution packages. Think of the solution framework as SharePoint's own installer framework, similar to the Microsoft Installer files (*.MSI). The solution framework enables developers to collate custom code and files, among other things, into a single package and add an instruction file to the package telling SharePoint what to do with the files. SharePoint then takes the package and deploys all the changes, outlined in the instruction file, to servers in the farm at a scheduled time. It is even intelligent ...