How Do Get Solutions Files From Existing SharePoint Farm?

When upgrading I found that we were missing copies of one or more solution. As well, sometimes you bring up a new dev box, and you’re like well how do we get all the solutions to mirror what’s in the new dev environment. Well, how do I get them out of there?

For SharePoint 2007

Came across a great tool on MSDN for being able to pull down your solutions from your SharePoint 2007 environment. It will drop all your WSPs in a folder. It’s a simple command line tool in a single executable, so dependencies and other logic make this the most simple and clean solution I’ve come across.

http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/SPSolutionExtractor

Example: SharePointFarmSolutionExtractor.exe -extractAll c:SharePointSolutions

For SharePoint 2010

I hear that it’s as easy as doing a config based backup and grabbing out the solution, but it may not be as easy as it sounds. Eli Van Eenwyk shares in a few lines of powershell that it isn’t too tough in SharePoint 2010 to get what you’re looking for.

http://www.inergex.com/blogs/sharepoint/2010/06/21/powershell-retrieve-wsp-sharepoint-solution-store