There's no emulator for Windows 8, so in order to develop metro apps I must install the release candidate on a device and run Visual Studio there, right? That's what this page seems to suggest, but I just wanted to double check.
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4 Answers
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Yes, Windows8 is required.
However, VM can be used. For example, I'm running Win8RP/64 and VS2012RC in Oracle VirtualBox on Win7/64.
NOTE: For developing Metro Style App, you should NOT install VirtualBox Extension Pack.
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Yes, you need Windows 8 to develop Windows 8 Metro style apps.
Metro Style apps rely on a new set of APIs which are implemented only in Windows 8 through the the Windows Runtime (WinRT).
There is no emulator for Windows 7 and not even for Windows 8... Windows 8 has a simulator which in practice is just a Remote Desktop session to the same machine. It is not an emulator.
While Windows 8 is not in its final version, what I recommend is to install Windows 8 in a VHD (virtual hard disk) and boot your PC directly to the VHD. It is faster than running virtual machines (because only the disk is virtual, all the rest is real hardware) and you can keep your Windows 7 intact.
This is what I've been using since Developer Preview. I have a dual-boot configuration being one for the Windows 7 that is booting from the regular disk partition, and one Windows 8 that is booting directly from the VHD on disk.
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Metro UI style is just a design approach and some guidelines. You are free to implement such interface using Visual Studio 2010 as well as 2008. Using C# and WPF everything is possible. But, indeed, new Visual Studio has a set of Metro style components (WPF) with which your development process will be much more quicker. The only thing you can't use at OS other than Windows 8 - is WinRT subsystem.
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Almost all of the development tools needed to build Metro style applications can be run on OS's other than Windows 8 (Visual Studio and the package creation tools require Windows 8). So it should be possible to set up a build environment using msbuild.exe (or even make/nmake) that will compile and link metro-style applications on an OS other than Windows 8.
However some parts of development MUST be done on Windows 8 - the tools for some of the steps of development will only run on Windows 8.
