Windows Driver Kit

The Windows Driver Kit (WDK) is a software toolset from Microsoft that enables the development of device drivers for the Microsoft Windows platform. It includes documentation, samples, build environments, and tools for driver developers. A complete toolset for driver development also need the following: a compiler Visual Studio, Windows SDK, and Windows Hardware Certification Kit.

Previously, the WDK was known as Windows Driver Development Kit (DDK) and supported Windows Driver Model (WDM) development. It got its current name when Microsoft released Windows Vista and added the following previously separated tools to the kit: Installable File System Kit (IFS Kit), Driver Test Manager (DTM), though DTM was later renamed and removed from WDK again.

The DDK for Windows 2000 and earlier versions did not include a compiler; instead you need to install Visual C++ separately to compile drivers. From the version for Windows XP the DDK and later the WDK include a command line compiler to compile drivers. One of the reasons Microsoft gave for including a compiler was that the quality of drivers would improve if they were compiled with the same version of the compiler that was used to compile Windows itself while Visual C++ is targeted to application development and has a different product cycle with more frequent changes. The WDK 8.x and later series goes back to require installing a matched version of Visual Studio separately, but this time the integration is more complete that you can edit / build / debug the driver from within the Visual Studio directly.

Note: Windows NT DDK, Windows 98 DDK and Windows 2000 DDK are no longer available for download by Microsoft because of Java-related settlements made by Microsoft with Sun Microsystems.