SDK contents

What are the contents of an SDK from the build system perspective?

An SDK is the collection of paths and properties. The paths can be used by build tasks to retrieve the locations of various SDK resources. The properties can be used to determine various aspects of the given SDK (e.g. version).

Both the paths and properties are referenced using identifiers. These identifiers are defined by each different SDK types. The identifiers should be used in association with a given SDK.

For example:

• The exe.java path identifier for a Java SDK from the saker.java.compiler package will return the path to the Java executable.
• The java.major property identifier for a Java SDK from the saker.java.compiler package will return the value of the Java major version for the JDK.
• The exe.cl.x64.x64 path identifier for a VC tools SDK from the saker.msvc package will return the path to the C++ compiler that runs on x64 and compiles for x64 architecture.

We can see that the identifiers that can be used with a given SDK depends on the SDK that is used to resolve the identifier. E.g. you can't use exe.cl.x64.x64 identifier on a Java SDK, as a JDK doesn't provide such services.