As promised, Facebook has clarified which software development kits (SDKs) it supports and which SDKs the company has deprecated. The announcement is a response to developers complaining about Facebook’s inability to communicate clearly, especially when making changes around its platform and application programming interfaces (APIs).
Facebook currently provides support for the following four SDKs:
- JavaScript SDK: source & documentation
- PHP SDK: source & documentation
- iOS SDK: source & documentation
- Android SDK: source & documentation
Facebook is in the process of moving the location of the JavaScript SDK repository from connect-js to facebook-js-sdk and the location of the PHP SDK from php-sdk to facebook-php-sdk. On April 1, 2012, only the new repositories will be updated moving forward and the old repositories will be made private.
To report any bugs or issues with the above four SDKs, you should file a report with Facebook’s Bugs Tool, which now has a dedicated team of engineers devoted to supporting developers. There was some confusion caused by the Issues tabs in GitHub, which Facebook does not provide support via and has thus since removed from all of its GitHub repositories.
In 2011, Facebook deprecated or removed the following three SDKs:
- Python SDK: This SDK is deprecated. The GitHub repository will be made private on April 1, 2012.
- C# SDK: This SDK is deprecated. The GitHub repository will be made private on April 1, 2012.
- Facebook iPhone SDK: This SDK is deprecated, has been made private, and has been replaced by the iOS SDK.
Facebook points out that just because it no longer provides an official Facebook SDK for a given language/runtime does not mean that you cannot write Facebook apps using said technologies. The whole Facebook Platform (Graph API, Dialogs, etc.) can be accessed from any language or runtime with an HTTP library in a simple and straightforward way; many developers forgo Facebook’s official SDKs completely and just use HTTP. Facebook says it deprecated the above SDKs based on its need to reduce surface area and provide better support, but believes various developer communities will eventually create Facebook SDKs for these platforms.
See also:
- Facebook tries to appease frustrated developers
- Developer survey finds Facebook has the worst API
- Facebook hosting two Mobile Hack events next month
- Facebook offers app developers the Heroku cloud
- Facebook Platform on Mobile comes to Android
- Facebook Platform goes mobile, starting with Apple iOS
- Facebook launches HTML5 Resource Center
