Regardless of the type of Visual Studio Solution you develop – a regular web application or even a Windows application – eventually you will need to "package" it for the purpose of deploying it to another server or client computer. Such packaging is varied and may be a Cabinet (.CAB
) file, a Microsoft Installer (.MSI
) file, or a setup.exe
(your classic setup wizard). The packaging format for SharePoint is a SharePoint Solution, having a file extension of .WSP
. A server administrator will be able to deploy your WSP file with a combination of PowerShell commands and/or Central Administration.
Some summary points about SharePoint Solution files:
They are files of CAB format that are used to package physical files up for deployment to SharePoint Servers
Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint 2010 tools will automatically create this file for you, that is automatically do the "packaging"
You can give WSP files to Server Administrators to install / deploy your features to other...