Using a v90 Platform toolset on VisualStudio 2010

Question

In our company for software development we are mainly using VisualStudio 2010 (Platform toolset v100). We ran into a situation where we needed to work with some poorly organized third party SDK that was compiled using VisualStudio 2008 (V90) and this SDK can't function normally while working in the "v100" platform toolset.

What I mean by "poorly organized" is.. imagine for example an SDK export functions that has something like a "std::string" in it.

The solution was to create a "wrapper" dll that we compiled using VS2010, but with a "Platform Toolset v90" option. But for "Platform Toolset v90" to work, we needed to install a VisualStudio 2008.

My question is: Is there any legal way to use v90 platform toolset in VS2010 without buying VisualStudio 2008? Maybe there is some kind of v90 "toolset package" or something that we could use?

Thanks.

Answer 1

As user1240436 stated in his comment, it should also be possible to install the Microsoft Platform SDK. I think v6.0 and higher contain the VC 9.0 and its environment.