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"Any plans to have a separate WinFX download that just covers the managed parts of the API?"

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The following was posted as a comment on Friday by Stuart Ballard:

"Any plans to have a separate WinFX download that just covers the managed parts of the API?

"Actually personally I was never even a fan of the fact that WPF and WCF were bundled into the same download - they have absolutely nothing to do with each other except two letters in common in their acronym.

"I'm very interested in coding with WPF but I have absolutely no interest in WCF or WF at the moment (nobody's yet managed to show me any actual problem I might face while coding that those technologies might apply to) and I'm certainly not interested in all the C++ and unmanaged APIs that are implied by a "Windows SDK". (It was an effort to resist the temptation of using the word "legacy" in that sentence ;) )

"If it makes sense to Microsoft from a business perspective to have the same team working on all these things, or to keep them in the same source code repository, that's great. But it doesn't make sense to a *customer* to have to download hundreds of megabytes of irrelevant stuff just to be able to use one of the APIs that are included. Please make separate installers as well as the big monster one! :) "

Good question, and this is one we've been wrestling with. Current plans in the SDK are to, first of all, offer a web downloader for the February CTP instead of requiring users to download an ISO. The ISO will still be available for each release - that's our minbar - but we're also bringing back the web installer, which was last seen in the September CTP. This installer will allow users to install content with granularity. For instance, if you only work in managed code, you can deselect the Win32 docs and samples if you want, and only receive WinFX docs and samples. Both the downloader and granularity are in the dev phase right now. I'll post more about them when they're closer to release.

But that doesn't really address what you're asking about, if I understand it, Stuart, because we haven't done any work to split up individual WinFX components. You make a really logical point that WinFX is a disparate set of technologies and you may only need references for WPF and not care about WCF. Based on comments I heard at PDC, many people would agree with you. However, we have some technological drawbacks in our back-end build system that work against our adding this level of additional granularity. That's not to say we won't do it, but it's not on our radar at this point.

But if you feel stronly about it, please ask for it in blog comments and posts, newsgroups and the Windows Vista SDK forum. If we get a groundswell of user asks, it will quickly climb up our to-do list.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2006
    And the flip side of the coin, is that there are many of us who only want the unmanaged portions and don't want WinFX docs/samples at all.

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 10, 2006
    Nice news. It is exactly what prevents me from trying recent WinFX version now.

    Because Visual Studio WinFX integration require Windows SDK, and December SDK is more than 1Gb. Too large size for download every month a copy.

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