Freigeben über

Visual Studio/Windows SDK: what’s the difference?

  • Artikel

I’ve received a few emails from beginning developers asking what the difference is between Visual Studio and the Windows SDK. This is a popular question on the forums too, so I’ll address it here in my “SDK Basics Series.”

Visual Studio and the Windows SDK are serve different purposes but they work well together. In fact, many SDK components ship embedded in Visual Studio. You may find that you want to use both Visual Studio and the Windows SDK in your development work. Both provide development environments in which you can build applications. You can build applications without Visual Studio, using only the SDK command line build environment, which includes the same compilers that ship in Visual Studio. Most folks prefer the GUI environment of Visual Studio, and the many tools and resources it has to offer. Visual Studio (non-Express versions) is the only place to get the resources you’ll need to develop for ATL/MFC.

 

The Windows SDK provides necessary components that Visual Studio does not ship, that allow you to make use of the Win32 API set and the .NET Framework. After installing Visual Studio and the Windows SDK, you can run a tool that integrates the SDK with Visual Studio so you have access to the latest and greatest headers and libraries you need.

 

The SDK includes additional tools that help in your development, debugging and distribution efforts, and also samples you can use to learn new technologies or as “starter code” for your own applications. Samples are created by product units around Microsoft and by the SDK Team, including samples that use managed code and those that primarily use native code.

 

The Windows SDK also includes a rich set of documents (with code examples) to learn about Windows and .NET Framework technologies and how to use them. The docs include both the conceptual (overviews, getting started, how-to) and reference pages (the API listings).

 

The latest release-quality SDK is the Windows SDK Update for Windows Vista, released in March, 2007. This SDK includes content for application development with the APIs in Windows Vista, including the .NET Framework 3.0 technologies: .NET Framework 2.0, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Windows CardSpace. This SDK is designed for use with Windows Vista (which includes Framework 3.0). The Windows SDK Update for Vista also supports creating applications for and on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Server 2003 R2. This release of the Windows SDK is compatible with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (including Express versions) and the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0.

 

(If you want to develop for .NET using the SDK and Visual Studio 2005, you’ll need to download VS.NET 2005 extensions download for .NET 3.0: https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F54F5537-CC86-4BF5-AE44-F5A1E805680D&displaylang=en and install it AFTER you install the SDK. This download provides developers support for building .NET Framework 3.0 applications using Visual Studio 2005.)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2008
    I’ve received a few emails from beginning developers asking what the difference is between Visual Studio