Windows SDK (formerly known as Microsoft Windows SDK, Microsoft Win32 SDK, and Platform SDK) is a software development kit (SDK) from Microsoft that contains documentation, header files, libraries, compilers, samples and assorted tools required to develop apps for Microsoft Windows.

In 2006, several other SDKs for .NET Framework, Microsoft Tablet PCs, and the Windows Media platform were merged into Microsoft Windows SDK serving the developers of .NET Framework 3 through .NET Framework 4.5. The .NET Framework SDK, however, split off in 2013.

History

The first incarnations of the package were Microsoft Windows SDK (with the "Microsoft" prefix) for Windows 3.1x and Microsoft Win32 SDK for Windows NT 3.1, released in 1992.

Platform SDK was released in 1999. It contains compilers, tools, documentations, header files, libraries and samples needed for software development on IA-32, x64 and IA-64 CPU architectures.

Starting with Windows Vista, Platform SDK, as well as the SDKs for Windows PowerShell, .NET Framework, Microsoft Tablet PC, and the Windows Media platform were replaced by a unified Microsoft Windows SDK. The SDK for DirectX was merged much later in 2012, with the release of Windows 8. The Windows Media Center SDK for Windows Vista also shipped separately. The SDK for .NET Framework split off in 2013.

In 2013, the package dropped the "Microsoft" prefix and was released as Windows SDK.

Features

Windows SDK includes documentation, header files, libraries, compilers, samples and assorted tools required for:

• Desktop app development with Windows API

• Desktop app development with .NET Framework and managed code (only between 2006–2013)

• UWP app development using Windows Runtime and Universal Windows Platform

• Web app development using ASP.NET, HTML, CSS and JavaScript

• Language-related topics (such as syntax and conventions) for PowerShell, C++, C#, Visual Basic, and F#. Originally, the documentation included JavaScript, CSS and HTML topics, but they have been removed in favor of MDN Web Docs.

With the inception of Microsoft Learn, the documentations in the SDK were made available under the MIT License or occasionally permissive Creative Commons licenses. For example, in the case of Windows PowerShell 5.1, the documentation's license is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, while the code license is MIT License.

Windows SDK allows the user to specify the components to be installed and where to install them. It integrates with Visual Studio, so that multiple copies of the components that both have are not installed; however, there are compatibility caveats if either of the two is not from the same era. Information shown can be filtered by content, such as showing only new Windows Vista content, only .NET Framework content, or showing content for a specific language or technology.

Windows SDK is available free of charge. Early versions are available on the Microsoft Download Center but later versions were moved to MSDN in 2012, and now available on MSDN's successor, Microsoft Learn. For a time, the SDK could be ordered on CDs and later DVDs.

A developer might need to use an older SDK. For example, the Windows Server 2003 Platform SDK released in February 2003 was the last SDK to provide full support of Visual Studio 6.0.

Release details

See also

• Microsoft Learn

• Windows Driver Kit

• Windows App SDK

Endnotes

References

External links

• Archived Microsoft TechNet Wiki

• Windows SDK Archive