Does Visual Studio 2012 include the full Windows SDK?

Question

If I installed Visual Studio 2012, I need to install the Windows SDK or all tools / parts of the SDK are included as part of the Visual Studio installation.

Answer 1

The Visual Studio 2012 Installer does not contain the full SDK for Windows or the Visual Studio 2012 SDK. they must be installed separately.

Answer 2

Depends on which version of VS 2012 you installed. The professional version and higher includes the Windows 8 SDK, so if you do not plan to develop applications for Windows XP or earlier versions of the OS, there is no need to install the SDK separately - you already have it.

However, if you installed VS 2012 Express, I would suggest referring to the online documentation for clarification on this issue.

Answer 3

See this post for more information:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chuckw/archive/2012/03/22/where-is-the-directx-sdk.aspx

"The DirectX SDK is now part of the Windows 8.0 SDK."

"The Windows SDK for Windows 8 (also known as the Windows 8.0 SDK) is included with Visual Studio 2012 and is also available as a standalone package for use with Visual Studio 2010."