What do you need to develop under windows ce 7?

Question

ARM

He was engaged in the development of small (microcontrollers) and large (large ARM processors, linux) embedded software for linux and linux. Under Windows - only desktop applications.
When developing some kind of embedded system for Linux, everything is clear to me. The hardware manufacturer provides its patched kernel, some specific libs, and generally a ready-made buildroot or Yocto to build the final finished image of the entire system. I downloaded, configured, uploaded my software, everything works, everything is clear. There are no costs for software, everything you need usually lies on the website of the hardware manufacturer.
The question arose, what is needed in order to develop software for a device on windows ce? A piece of iron on the arm, the manufacturer declares support for Windows. But what is the development process for Windows, where to harness horses here is not at all clear.
It seems that you will need to buy a visual studio, because in free versions you cannot develop under embedded?
All through visual studio? It will just be necessary to throw in some files that the manufacturer of the piece of iron will provide and the result will be an image for a flash drive?
And what about the licenses for Windows itself? The license under each device should be bought?
How can you play around with this without buying something right away?