I have tried multiple ways to get the production SharePoint content to my newly installed local development environment that is running on a VM Windows Server 2008 R2. After an export of the farm and a restore failed I came across this blog post and followed these instrucitons: http://richardstk.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/build-a-sharepoint-2010-development-test-environment/. To sum up, it's basically backing up the live SQL Content database as well as the Profile, Sync and Social databases, then restoring them on the dev machine and pointing SharePoint to use these new databases instead of the old ones. Then after that I deployed the custom webparts to the development server from within Visual Studio.
I've done this and it seemed to work pretty well. I can access Central Administrator as well as setting up a SharePoint Connection within Visual Studio and being able to see all the pages, lists, documents, etc. So it is definitely pointing to the new content database. I should mention I can also connect via SharePoint Designer and access all the correct content, Master Pages, lists, etc.
The problem I am having is that I am getting a "Could not load file or assembly" error when I go to the site in a browser and it takes me to /Pages/Home.aspx. The file is a custom webpart that I have deployed from within Visual Studio. When I look within the GAC I see the assembly listed but the PublicKeyToken is different from the one that is shown in the error message.
When I dig into it a little more I see that the custom user control is registered in my Master page, and when I look at the ascx file in the _controltemplates directory where it is located there is an Assembly that looks like this:
<%@ Assembly Name="BlogRoll, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=529e9730fe2a198d" %>
That PublicKeyToken is correct for the live site when I look in the GAC there but when I deployed it to my local GAC it created a new PblicKeyToken. Sorry if I'm rambling but I wasn't sure what was relevant and what wasn't.
I guess my question is how to handle this? It doesn't seem smart to change all the ascx files locally to match the new PublicKeyToken's that I have in the local GAC because then when I deploy these changes to live they won't find the appropriate assembly. What is the best way to handle this?
UPDATE
The code in question has a key.snk file that is being used to strongly sign it. My understanding is that this should make it so that it gets compiled with a specific PublicKeyToken each time and therefore install in the GAC with a specific PublicKeyToken. If that is true, then I believe the only reason it would have a different key token on my dev environment versus the production is that the key.snk file that has been provided is incorrect. Is that true?
