I want to pass along some information about the Windows SDK for WinFX Runtime Components November CTP.

As you know, WinFX is an important part of Windows Vista™.  As such, the WinFX SDK is now part of the Windows SDK. The SDK team started the work to combine these two behemoth SDKs (PSDK+WinFX SDK) in October and will complete this work early in 2006.
 
For the November CTP of WinFX, we have provided a snapshot of one of our daily builds of the newly recombined Windows SDK (those of you who went to PDC 2003 might remember the Longhorn SDK). This SDK is not at the level of quality that you are used to seeing from us (even for a CTP).  We have much more work ahead of us to properly integrate the two SDKs, but for now, everything is crammed together in one big package.  I hope you will be patient while we work to combine these two large SDKs into one all encompassing SDK for the Windows platform.

It's very important to read the README.HTM before downloading and installing the November CTP SDK. Don't skip this step or you might regret it.

Here are some of the gotchas for the upcoming release (much more detail is provided in the README): 

  1. We are only providing an ISO DVD image.  It's really big.  'Nuff said.
  2. The November CTP SDK should NOT be installed on any currently available build of Windows Vista.  It is only supported on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as is the WinFX RC November CTP.
  3. The November CTP SDK only supports the November CTP of the WinFX Runtime Components.  Therefore, it only supports managed code development and not native Win32 code development (despite the fact that there are a whole bunch of Win32 headers, libs, samples and documentation in it).  Just ignore the man behind the curtain.
  4. Custom install is not even closed to finished, and frankly doesn’t work very well yet.  You will be able to choose between docs, samples and tools and not much else.  It will eventually get more granular, but it’s going to take us a release or two to get it right (with your help and feedback).
  5. With a work around or two (see the release notes), you can probably do x64 managed code development, but we did not do a full test pass on that, so we don't know how well it will work.  We did not do any test pass on IA64.

The supported install order is:

  1. VS 2005 RTM (optional) (DevCenterLink)
  2. WinFX RC November CTP (LINK)
  3. Window SDK November CTP (LINK)
  4. VS 2005 Extensions for WinFX RC November CTP (optional) (LINK)

So, if I haven’t totally put you off downloading the new Windows SDK for the WinFX November CTP, knock yourself out! 


Lori Pearce [MSFT]
Windows SDK Team