Lori Pearce's WebLog

Now that cl.exe and link.exe are available as a free download via
the Visual C++ toolkit, why not include them with the Platform SDK also?
It would be great to download just the Platform SDK "Build Environment"
and actually be able to build an application. This would be a boon for
students, hobbyists and even professionals who are familiar with command
line based tools, like gnumake on Linux. It would also allow developers
to build applications with completely free tools that are available in
one place (the Platform SDK). At the present time these tools are
dispersed widely in different toolkits. Where is nmake.exe? You have to
download the .NET SDK or something. This should be something that is
easily fixed and would increase developer goodwill.

In short, the Platform SDK build environment, once installed, should be
able to build the included SDK samples with no additional configuration
changes or downloads required.

This is on our list of things to follow up on with the C++ team. We hope to have this resolved very soon.