How do you build the Windows D3D9 refrast from source?

Question

Microsoft distributes source code to reference implementations of their different Direct3D APIs to hardware vendors, driver developers, etc. This code builds using the ever-cryptic WDK (formerly DDK) build system, and virtually never works out-of-the-box. Though widely used, this code is semi-private, so there is never any basic helpful information available on the wider web. This is commonly used enough (and a well-known pain in the ass in this community), and the basic build information insensitive enough, that it should be discoverable on Google.

The build readme suggests using the WDK and building with the command build -cz -daytona. This, confusingly, spits out a bunch of output yet builds nothing.

Getting past this, the Vista with WDK 6001.18002, the latest d3def9 source distribution fails in the link subproject with "failed to produce any output - warning treated as error."

The XP d3dref9.dll can also be confusing to build, frequently failing to find D3D headers and types.

Answer 1

There are generally two major issues quite common in building the refrast source drops as they come direct from Microsoft.

First, the build -cz -daytona command is either a typo or relies on undocumented additional external configuration. Building in this mode parses all the source, but never specifies which platform(s) to build. Since all platform dirs (daytona and win9x), where the actual outputs are specified, are "optional," nothing is ever actually built. The solution to this is to instead use the correctly-specified command build -cz daytona (no '-' on daytona). This should parse the sources and then actually build everything.

Past this, there are usually also problems with the out-of-the-box build setup.

The new WDKs (e.g. on Vista) generally fail in the final linking step with a spurious linker error. This is easily fixed by adding:

LIBRARIAN_FLAGS = $(LIBRARIAN_FLAGS) /IGNORE:4001

to the link/sources.inc build file. After this, build -cz daytona in the root of the source drop should build and link everything out-of-the-box.

On XP, it is also common to have issues if using older DDKs (pre-Windows Server 2003, i.e. "XP"-labeled DDKs). In particular, the refrast project relies on core D3D9 headers existing externally, and these are not included in the XP DDK. Simply using the latest WDKs (rebranded from "DDK" post-XP) solves this. Contrary to the naming, all newer WDKs are generally supersets of older releases, and so include build environments for platforms back through XP.

There may also be issues with some XP refrast source releases including code which triggers more pedantic compiler errors in the newer WDK compiler releases. These, however, can usually be easily fixed by iterative compilation and source tweaking in response to any simple safety/correctness errors raised by the compiler.