Software development kit: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:06, 16 May 2006

Revision as of 02:10, 19 May 2006

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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 proprietary 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 is 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.

Providers of SDKs for specific systems or subsystems may sometimes substitute a more specific term instead of ''software''. For instance, both [[Microsoft]] and [[Apple Computer]] provide '''Driver Development Kits''' ('''DDK''') for developing [[device driver]]s, and [[PalmSource]] brands its development kit as PalmOS Development Kit (PDK).