Alright, so I loaded the Developer Kit and installed the Firewire SDK (23) and have successfully used my Mac laptop to do .TS archiving to D-VHS for some time now.

Cool. It works. I love that I have this robust and (so far) stable functionality from a free SDK package.

Only problem--what I've found is, I'm running tight on space on my trusty laptop's hard drive. And when I look at my Developer folder...its a big whopping 974.3 MB! I know that's a whole LOT of material that I don't need to run my handful of Firewire apps (DVHScap, VirtualDVHS, VirtualDVHS2, etc.). I really need to throw some/most of this stuff away and free up some space here.

So, my question is...what is it I really NEED in the Developer package, and what can I safely toss out?

Much thanks to anyone who can help me here...

I can't give you a list of files to throw out, but I can suggest a way for you to find out for yourself. First make a new directory. Then move everything into that directory you think you won't need. Try recording. If everything works, then you know what to throw away. If it doesn't, you'll have to try the opposite: put one file/directory into the new folder at a time. When it stops working, you'll know which files/directories you'll need. Good luck.

I may have to resort to that kind of trial-and-error.

If anyone has any solid info on what files are definitely superfluous, though, that'd save me a LOT of needless time wasted.

The applications are self-contained. Just move the one (or ones) you actually use into your applications folder and you can toss the rest of the SDK.

That's what I'm talking about...

I was hoping a wholesale paring down would be possible.

So, is the Dev kit's full installation simply a prerequisite for the Firewire SDK's installer then...but not one which puts necessary components in place? Or are those files done to the system, but the apps in the Developer folder are seperate entities (self-contained apps as you say)?

Thanks, I'm just trying to understand what is actually going on w/ the Dev kit and its installed components.

The SDK doesn't add anything to your system* - the FireWire libraries themselves are already are part of the OS. It is just utilities/tools, documentation, and example code for developers. Some of the example code happens to be fully functional, useful apps.

Most of those apps use something called AVCVideoServices in the SDK, but the XCode projects build that framework right into each app, so you just need to copy the built application somewhere. Everything needed comes with it.

* You can install certain additional debug components from the SDK once it is installed, but they are not installed as part of installing the SDK, if that makes sense.

Thanks for the info/insights...

I haven't cleared things out yet, but I'm about to. Rah!

UPDATE: Cleared out 90% of the Dev Kit (kept a couple of other apps that seemed interesting) and did a successful dump to D-VHS last night...success! Thanks to everyone for their input.