VS2012, Windows 8, DirectX and their SDKs

Question

I've recently installed the Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows Desktop. Along with it, a part of Windows 8 SDK was installed as well.

Currently I want to develop programs only for Windows Vista/7 platform with DirectX 11. Up until now I just installed the Windows 7.1 SDK along with DirectX SDK from june 2010 and everything worked well. Currently, however, I'm a little confused, because the DirectX SDK was incorporated into the Windows 8 SDK. Also, VS2012 uses Windows 8 SDKs by default.

What should I do? Install the Windows 8 SDK and use it to write programs for Windows 7 with DirectX? Or maybe continue to use Windows 7.1 SDK and DirectX /june 2010 SDK? I want to be sure, that my programs (which do not use any 7-specific functions) will still work under Vista and 7.

Answer 1

I think you have two choices

1. install Win8 SDK and used the features compatible with Win7, since Win8 SDK include the DirectX SDK and there are some features only works under win8, your program will work on win7 as long as you didn't use such features
2. install Win7 SDK, this will make sure you program can works on Win7

only one thing, make sure the feature you are using are available on your platform, that's all. Here is a page about the DirectX SDKs, just for your reference

Where is the DirectX SDK?