Does anyone actually use the WinSDK build environment?

Is this part of the Windows SDK obsolete? We put a lot of energy into shipping a customer build environment with the latest VC ++ compilers and tools, and it’s all set up to build .NET apps out of the gate, but I rarely get feedback or questions about it. It makes me wonder if anyone is using it. I think most users prefer the Visual Studio IDE. Now that the Visual Studio (even Express!) includes the Windows SDK components you need to create Win32 applications – headers, libraries and tools, are parts of the Windows SDK becoming obsolete?

What can you do with the Windows SDK build environment that you can’t do with Visual Studio Express? Well… if you’re developing on X64 you won’t get a 64-bit compiler in the Express versions. And you can’t get the native IA64 compiler anywhere except the SDK. Even the high-end versions of VS don’t ship that.

I assume that most developers who use the SDK build environment use it as a template to create their own build environment that they can lock down and keep stable. But I don’t really know. Have you ever used it? What for?