Reputation: 32269

Develop for Windows 8 using Windows 7?

Is it possible to develop Windows 8 apps using Windows 7?

According to the page http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/hh852363.aspx#Requirements

Windows 7 is supported, by the SDK. I downloaded it.

Now I want to download visual studio (free, that's express, right?), but found only this:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#vs

According to this:

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/products/compatibility

It should run on Windows 7. The only free download I found is Express "for Windows 8" -

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/11/en-us/downloads#express-win8

And yeah, it runs only on Windows 8.

What do I have to download to develop for Windows 8 on Windows 7?

Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 0

Answers (5)

Nate S.

Reputation: 1157

There are very few resources out there that are up to date. Check you this from Microsoft Dev Center

Upvotes: 0

Jeremy Foster

Reputation: 4763

You cannot develop Windows 8 (as in WinRT apps) apps on Windows 7. You need to install Windows 8 whether it's natively or virtually.

Upvotes: 0

Glen Gordon

Reputation: 356

The Windows 8 SDK by itself is not an IDE like Visual Studio. Nor does it come with a compiler. So yes, you can install it on Windows 7, but you won't be able to do much with it unless you are willing to do a lot of work. You won't have any templates or things like that. The simplest way to build Windows Store apps (formerly referred to as Metro style) is to use Visual Studio and/or Blend running on a Windows 8 machine - running directly on a machine (recommended) or in a virual environment.

Upvotes: 4