DMD under 64-bit Windows 7 HOWTO

[Gor Gyolchanyan]

Good day, fellow D developers.
After spending much time figuring out how to make DMD work fluently under
64-bit Windows 7 I've realized that this is not a trivial task and lots of
people might have trouble with this, so I've decided to post my solution,
that might save people a lot of time.
As we know, there are compatibility problems with 32-bit DMD binaries,
because they are compiled using DMC back-end, which can only produce OMF
binaries, so in order to avoid problems with linking against externally
compiled libraries, it's much easier to stick to 64-bit binaries, so that
DMD will use the Visual Studio linker to produce compatible COFF binaries.
Another problem is that 32-bit DMD binaries are linked against obsolete
32-bit WinAPI libraries, which lack some very important functions, while
the 64-bit binaries are required to link with the 64-bit libraries,
supplied by the the Windows SDK.

And here's how this could be arranged:

1. Prepare your development folder.
1.1. Create a folder with no spaces in its full path.
1.2. Store its full path in the '%DEV_DIR_ROOT%' environment variable.
2. Get the Windows SDK.
2.1. Download the Windows SDK.
2.1.1. Navigate to 'http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/windows//bb980924.aspx'
in a web browser.
2.1.2. Under section 2 (number '2' in a green circle) click on the bold
blue 'Install Now' link.
2.1.3. In the opened window click in the blue 'Download' button at the
bottom of the page.
2.1.4. Make sure, that the Windows SDK installer ('winsdk_web.exe') is
downloaded.
2.2. Install the downloaded Windows SDK.
2.2.1. Navigate to the folder, where the Windows SDK installer was
downloaded in a file browser.
2.2.2. Double-click on the installer and agree to security warnings to
launch it.
2.2.3. Click next, read and agree to the license until you reach the
'Install Locations' screen.
2.2.4. Store the path under 'Destination Folder for Tools' in the
'%DEV_DIR_MSWINSDK%' (e.g. 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft
SDKs\Windows\v7.0A') and click 'Next >'.
2.3.3. On the 'Installation Options' uncheck everything except 'x64
Libraries' and 'Visual C++ Compilers' and click 'Next >'.
2.3.4. Confirm that everything is correct and click 'Next >' to start
installing.
2.3.5. Make sure, tata the installation is completed succesfully.
2.3.6. Store the path to the installed Visual Studio C++ compiler into the
'%DEV_DIR_MSVC%' environment variable (e.g. 'C:\Program Files
(x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC').
3. Get the DMD.
3.1. Navigate to 'http://ftp.digitalmars.com/dmd2beta.zip' in a web browser.
3.2. Make sure, that the DMD compiler archive ('dmd2beta.zip') is
downloaded.
3.3. Unzip the archive into '%DEV_DIR_ROOT%\Tools', so that the 'dmd2'
folder in the archive will end up in '%DEV_DIR_ROOT%\Tools\dmd2'.
3.4. Adapt the compiler configuration to the development environment.
3.4.1. Open the file '%DEV_DIR_ROOT%\Tools\dmd2\windows\bin\sc.ini' in a
text editor.
3.4.2. Replace the line with 'LIB=' with the line
'LIB="%DEV_DIR_WINSDK%\Lib\x64";"%DEV_DIR_MSVC%\lib\amd64";"%@P%\..\lib"'.
3.4.3. Add '-m64 -L/NOLOGO' to  the 'DFLAGS' variable.
3.4.4. Remove the lines with 'VCINSTALLDIR=' and 'WindowsSdkDir='.
3.4.5. Replace the like with 'LINKCMD64=' with the line
'LINKCMD64="%DEV_DIR_MSVC%\bin\amd64\link.exe"'
Now "%DEV_DIR_ROOT%\Tools\dmd2\windows\bin\dmd.exe" will always use the
Windows SDK libraries and Visual C++ compiler to produce 64-bit COFF
binaries.

I hope I was helpful, because when I started to set up a development
environment under 64-bit Windows 7, I went through a lot of problems to get
here and I'd love to have this HOWTO at that time.

-- 
Bye,
Gor Gyolchanyan.
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