<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--
    Copyright (C) 2006-2023 Oracle and/or its affiliates.

    This file is part of VirtualBox base platform packages, as
    available from https://www.virtualbox.org.

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
    modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
    as published by the Free Software Foundation, in version 3 of the
    License.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
    WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
    General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses>.

    SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-only
-->
<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
  "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd"[
<!ENTITY % all.entities SYSTEM "all-entities.ent">
%all.entities;
]>
<chapter id="VirtualBoxAPI">

  <title>&product-name; Programming Interfaces</title>

  <para>
    &product-name; comes with comprehensive support for third-party
    developers. The so-called <emphasis>Main API</emphasis> of
    &product-name; exposes the entire feature set of the virtualization
    engine. It is completely documented and available to anyone who
    wishes to control &product-name; programmatically.
  </para>

  <para>
    The Main API is made available to C++ clients through COM on Windows
    hosts or XPCOM on other hosts. Bridges also exist for SOAP, Java and
    Python.
  </para>

  <para>
    All programming information such as documentation, reference
    information, header and other interface files, as well as samples
    have been split out to a separate <emphasis role="bold">Software
    Development Kit (SDK)</emphasis>. The SDK is available for download
    from
    <ulink url="http://www.virtualbox.org" />.
    In particular, the SDK comes with a Programming Guide and Reference
    manual in PDF format. This manual contains, among other things, the
    information that was previously in this chapter of the User Manual.
  </para>

</chapter>
