CE6 – Instant SDK?

I’m busy bashing out my Win32 code for the “choose an API” session at ESC East, I’m using Visual Studio 2005/Platform Builder to build/deploy/debug/test my CE 6.0 image, and have a couple of choices for application development.

  1. Write a Win32 C/C++ application as a “subproject” in Platform Builder – this means that the application is integrated into the O/S when I build either the O/S or the application
  2. Create an SDK for my OSDesign, install the SDK on the same development machine, and then use a second instance of Visual Studio to write/deploy/debug the application – without touching the running operating system.

I decided to go with the second option – but… the process of building an SDK and installing the SDK seems pointless if I already have the built operating system with the appropriate header files and libraries – If I’m developing locally (on the same machine as my Platform Builder install), would it be useful to have an “Instant SDK” option? – which takes the .h/.lib for your current workspace, drops it into the appropriate folder, and registers the SDK with VS 2005?

The process of building the MSI is useful if you want to publish the SDK to other teams internally, or to customers.

- Mike