I guess the years-long discourse about using old SDKs is finally coming to an end.
Tbf this is probably the best possible solution for everyone:
- Garmin doesn't have to worry about trying to support devs who use an old SDK (either accidentally, because they believe it's necessary to build for older devices, or on purpose, because they believe it may save memory or because they want to avoid any new bugs)
- Garmin doesn't have to worry about the issue with the CIQ API version check being broken in older SDKs, such that older SDKs incorrectly think they support newer CIQ versions (and therefore newer devices) than they actually do. (e.g. Fenix 8 requires a certain 7.x SDK, but some SDKs which are much older incorrectly believe they can build for Fenix 8, despite the presence of a check in the compiler which is supposed to prevent that kind of thing.) [*]
- Garmin doesn't have to explain whether an older SDK would work on a newer device or not (and in what specific circumstances), they just force you to use 8.1 and higher
- Devs will be forced to do the "right thing" (i.e. what Garmin wants us to do)
It also takes away one of the reasons for trying to build with old/edited device files. To be clear, I think the two reasons are:
1) to use older SDKs (but then again the version check in older SDKs was broken anyway)
2) to allow your app to be installed on devices with firmware which is older than what's that's specified in the latest device files
Then again, depending on whether this is a one-time thing or not, all of these issues may just come back again in the next 1-2 years ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[*] at least this specific problem will go away forever, regardless of what happens in the future
