Software development kit: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:24, 7 June 2005

Revision as of 10:31, 8 June 2005

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A software engineer typically receives the SDK from the target system developer. Often times, the SDK can be downloaded directly via the [[Internet]]. Many SDKs are provided for free to encourage developers to use the system or language. Sometimes this is used as a marketing tool. For example, ''Foo Products'' might provide the ''Widget SDK'' for free to encourage people to use it. In turn, more people will be encouraged to buy more of their widgets since they can program them for free.

SDKs may have attached [[license]]s that make them unsuitable for building software intended to be developed under an incompatible license. For example a proprietary SDK will likely be incompatible with [[Free software]] development. And a [[GPL]] licensed SDK will ''likely'' be incompatible with proprietary software development. [[LGPL]] SDKs are typically safe for propritaryproprietary development.

An SDK for an operating system add-on (for instance, [[QuickTime]] for [[Mac OS]]) may include the add-on software itself, to be used for development purposes, if not necessarily for redistribution. An interesting situation arises here between platforms where it is possible to develop applications that can at least start up on a system configuration without the add-on installed, and use a [[Gestalt (Mac OS)|Gestalt]]-style run-time ''environment query'' to determine if the add-on is present, and ones where the application will simply fail to start. In other words, is it possible to build a single binary that will run on configurations with and without the add-on present, albeit operating with reduced functionality in the latter situation.