There is an awful lot of crap to wade through when you want to program a console application with a tab and settings section.

Here is an extremely basic breakdown of what you’ll need before starting to program.

1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

2. Microsoft Windows SDK available at:  http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=94640 (Specifically the ORCA tool)

3. A Windows Home Server… of course.

4. Idea for a project… (here is a link to the sample project the MSDN site stepped me through creating)

5. Lastly the HomeServerExt.dll and Microsoft.HomeServer.SDK.Interop.v1.dll files copied from your WHS c:\program files\Windows Home Server directory.

Once you have all of these things, you’ll be ready to program… I think… I’m gotten thru all of the project stuff, created my installer, but I didn’t have the Windows SDK before hand.  I’m downloading/installing it now in order to do the final step of using ORCA to edit the msi file so WHS will recognize it as an Add-In.

For additional references and info on programming for your home server… checkout Microsofts website:  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc952481.aspx