What is the best way to set up your development environment for Sitecore

Question

The general guidance appears to be to install Sitecore into one folder, e.g. D:\Websites\MyWebSite and then create your Visual Studio project in a separate folder, e.g. C:\Projects\MyWebProject. You would then publish your custom code into the Sitecore folder from Visual Studio (This video explains what I’m describing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Mwcphtz4w around 13 mins in).

I have the following questions:-

1. Do people only store their Visual Studio project in source countrol and not the Sitecore code?
2. The publish option from VS into the Sitecore folder only has options for adding files or deleting anything not in the VS project. How would files removed from the VS project ever get deleted without doing it manually?
3. We use web-deploy to publish sites to staging and live environments. In this scenario would you publish from your VS project or would you set up a way to publish the Sitecore folder (if so how)?
4. Is this actually a good set up to have or do you do something different?

Answer 1

I did a lot of research on this when we started Sitecore development a couple of years ago. I remember reading a post from Sean Kearney that made a lot of sense to me: http://seankearney.com/post/Visual-Studio-Projects-and-Sitecore

We ended up using this approach for both large and small scale projects and it has been great. You will also want to look at a couple of other tools:

• Team Development for Sitecore (TDS) from Hedgehog Development (http://www.hhogdev.com/products/team-development-for-sitecore/overview.aspx)
• CopySauce from Igloo (http://www.igloo.com.au/blog/copysauce-igloos-sitecore-development-utility/)
• SitecoreRocks for Visual Studio

So to answer your questions:

1. All of your code and some of the Sitecore items are stored in source control. The approach you want to take is to only store new Sitecore items (layouts, sublayouts, templates, etc) that you create along with any items you may need to customize. You do not need to store all of the sitecore source, content or modules...just what you would need to reapply to get a fresh environment up-to-date. You can manage this manually but a tool like TDS makes this MUCH easier.
2. We use TDS to manage the publish/deploy to each of our environments. TDS has configurable settings for handling items that have been deleted, including the ability to move it to the Sitecore recycle bin or simply remove it. You have to be careful with this but it does work.
3. We use a separate build environment to assemble and run deployments using TDS and Jenkins. Basically, all of the code is retrieved from the source control system to the Sitecore server and built using MSBuild and TDS. In most cases we use a webdeploy directly to the Sitecore webroot, but for production we build TDS packages and then run them on each Content Delivery Server
4. We have used this setup for 7 sitecore projects so far and I am very happy with how it has worked out. We have questioned whether TDS is worth the license fee but the answer always comes back as a yes. The alternative is not very appealing for our development staff and time savings far out-weigh the costs.

Answer 2

1. Everything is stored in Source Control!... just not always in the same area as they reside on the web server. Storing the Sitecore folder in source control is a good idea as there are changes that you will have as you install modules, but you do NOT add the Sitecore folder as part of your solution/project and should really be there to pull from if need be and not something that is even tracked/monitored.

2. Once Sitecore is installed, create a new project that resides in the website folder and only add things like the properties folder, layouts, xml and other folders that you want. I don't even include the app_config in my project. Oh and to be clear, it's probably best to just keep the Sitecore folder as a sort of reference folder in your source control but not as part of your website trunk. We have it on the ignore list for website folder in source control. However, that being said, keep in mind that you will NEED to have it in your website folder.

3. Technically speaking, the recommended approach is to install Sitecore on to the server itself as a stand alone empty instance.. like using the installer with the client mode (not full) so that you get the framework for an empty site in place. Then you can create the deployment package/packages/whatever and it will all be your own code. You should really never have to mess with changing/removing the base Sitecore file system manually.

4. See above. Generally speaking, unless you have a reason to do so: install Sitecore as an empty instance... then manage your code/files via deployment and just leave the Sitecore folder files alone. You will have very little reason to ever touch them or the Sitecore folder itself outside of an upgrade.

Answer 3

1. Adding Sitecore itself to source control should be avoided, since you won't be deploying Sitecore as part of your implementation. For modifications to Sitecore itself, you would need a way of handling those inside your implementation, but the config patch system and other mechanisms provide the means for this.

2. Redundant files in the web site folder will only be a real problem in your development environment. When publishing to a demo environment or to a live environment, you will only publish the material that you actually want. And the deployment-based setup opens up the possibility of always starting from a clean Sitecore installation - as long as you include your Sitecore modifications as part of your implementation (which is not covered in the video). So there is little risk of this being a problem in real life, and the development method in the video makes eliminating this risk entirely possible.

3. The Sitecore installation should be handled outside of the deployment of your implementation.

4. It's a good setup, because the method in the video is the method Sitecore recommends for development, and it is also the method Sitecore teaches to developers in development courses. The most obvious advantages of this method are

   • Clean separation between your web site implementation and the Sitecore installation. There is no risk of accidentally mangling the Sitecore installation, and there is no risk of forgetting unmanaged manual modifications to Sitecore that are needed to run your site. This separation is hard to accomplish if you're not using the method in the video.

   • By using publishing to deploy your implementation, you know that your implementation is deployable on top of a clean Sitecore installation - and works. This means when deploying to a production or demo server in the future, things will work the same and there will be no surprises. This is very hard to be confident about if you're not using the method in the video.

   • To test your implementation on a different version of Sitecore, you can just deploy to a clean installation of a different version. This is very hard to test if you're not using the method in the video.

There is sample source code for the video on GitHub, along with instructions on how to set up the development environment, including the publishing parts. This sample source directly and indirectly answers some of your questions.