Using the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 8 Consumer Preview with Visual Studio 2010

Now that the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows 8 Consumer Preview has been released, I would like to show you how you can use the Windows 8 SDK with Visual Studio 10.

• Download and install the SDK from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/hh852363.
• Note the location of your Win8 SDK install – by default it is %PROGRAMFILES%\Windows Kits\8.0\
• Open your project in VS 2010.  The instructions to do this in VS11 with the v100 platform toolset are similar and you may try that out as well, but these instructions below show how to do this in VS 2010.
• For each project where you want to use the Windows 8 SDK, go to project properties, VC++ Directories

• Change the following properties (if you installed the SDK to a different location, replace the SDK path with your custom install location):

-          In “Executable Directories” replace $(WindowsSdkDir)bin with $(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\bin\x86

-          In “Include Directories” add $(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\Include\um;$(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\Include\shared at the beginning and remove $(WindowsSdkDir)include

-          In “Library Directories” replace $(WindowsSdkDir)lib with $(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\lib\win8\um\x86

-          In “Exclude Directories” replace $(WindowsSdkDir)include with $(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\Include\um;$(ProgramFiles)\Windows Kits\8.0\Include\shared

-          When targeting x64, replace x86 with x64

That’s it – you should be ready to build and run!

Alex Thaman

Senior Test Lead

Visual C++ Team

Microsoft Corp.