In SharePoint 2007, you can manage solutions using the stsadm command. In SharePoint 2010, stsadm still works, but is deprecated in favor of PowerShell cmdlets. Whereas with stsadm you use a command-line switch to specify the operation to perform, with PowerShell you use separate cmdlets. Below are the list of stsadm commands and equivalent PowerShell commands for common tasks to manage a farm solution. SharePoint 2010 also includes support for sandbox solutions. While they are not discussed here, you’d use similar cmdlets to manage them as well.

When running a cmdlet, the cmdlet returns right away, but the operation will take some time to complete. If you attempt to execute one cmdlet immediately after another, you may get an error if the previous operation hasn’t finished running.

To get further information on a cmdlet, for instance add-spsolution, just type get-help add-spsolution in PowerShell. Continue reading Managing SharePoint 2010 Farm Solutions with Windows PowerShell →