macOS Can Lion users download apps w. Base SDK 10.6?

[Danneman101]

I'm still running SL (mostly due to the initial negative reports on running Bootcamp on Lion), and I'm wondering if users who have upgraded to Lion will be able to download my apps.

The base sdk is 10.6, and as far as I understand after having browsed the Mac Dev Center website I can't download sdk 10.7 until I've upgraded my system.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I'm confused by your question. Applications compiled against the 10.6 SDK will work in Lion just fine, but won't take advantage of Lion-specific features unless you make provisions in your code to do so.

 

[Danneman101]

You can't be that confused since you gave me the answer to my question

Thanks for the answer - I'll keep developing on SL for a while longer then

 

[Kenndac]

SDKs are always forwards-compatible unless the architecture you build for goes away.

For example, building an application against the Intel 10.4 SDK will work on all Intel machines from 10.4 - 10.7. Apps built against the PPC 10.4 SDK stop working when PPC is no longer available.

An application built upon the 10.0 PPC SDK will work on the newest machines running Snow Leopard and Rosetta.

However, they're not necessarily *backwards* compatible. An application built against the 10.7 SDK may run on older OS versions, but only if you check APIs only available on 10.7 are there at runtime.

 

[Sydde]

SDKs are always forwards-compatible unless the architecture you build for goes away.

For example, building an application against the Intel 10.4 SDK will work on all Intel machines from 10.4 - 10.7.

My experience is that this is not strictly accurate. One app I built ran on Tiger and Leopard (10.4u SDK), but when someone tried it on 10.6, its interface failed to render correctly. This turned out to have something to do with how a NSArray was being loaded with NSImage objects. Apple is constantly making changes to how the OS works, to improve performance, stability and/or security, and some of these improvements can cause loss of functionality or even total failure for an application. In the case of my app, there was no clue in the docs as to what I needed to change to make it work.