Obtaining 10.6 Base SDK for Xcode 4.5.2

Question

How can I obtain and use 10.6 as base SDK in Xcode 4.5.2?

I downloaded Xcode 4.5.2 from the Mac App Store (through a link on the Apple developer site).

Is there a way I can somehow download the 10.6 SDK separately and start using it as a base SDK?

Strangely enough, I can download the documentation for the 10.6 SDK through Xcode's Preferences window, but not the SDK itself. Any ideas?

Answer 1

No, you can't download the 10.6 SDK separately.

Is there a reason you can't use the 10.8 or 10.7 SDK?

Keep in mind that just because you build against the 10.8 SDK, that doesn't mean you can't also have that built application work on 10.8, 10.7 and 10.6. (This is often a cause of confusion among new developers). You control backwards-compatibility through the Deployment Target setting like shown in the image below.

By default, the deployment target is generally set to the same version of OS X as the SDK is, but changing it to 10.6, for example, should allow it to run on a machine with OS X 10.6. (Of course, you should really test to make sure that's the case).