DMD under 64-bit Windows 7 HOWTO

[Joakim]

On Sunday, 26 May 2013 at 01:24:51 UTC, Manu wrote:
> I  might just add, that if you have Visual Studio installed 
> (which I
> presume many Windows dev's do), then you don't need to do 
> ANYTHING.
> DMD64 just works if VS is present.
>
> I didn't do a single thing to get DMD-Win64 working. And it's 
> working great.
I just set up an environment on Win 7 x64 using the Windows SDK 
version 7.1 without Visual Studio.  Using the DOS prompt that 
comes with the Windows SDK, which initializes various build 
variables, to compile to 64-bit COFF with dmd and link to a 
COFF64 C static library, the only thing I had to do was set a 
VCINSTALLDIR environment variable (set VCINSTALLDIR=C:\Program 
Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\), so that dmd could 
find the 64-bit linker, link.exe.

Other than that, all you need to do is install the Windows SDK 
7.1, which comes with the compiler, linker, and various build 
tools.  I had read that the latest Windows SDK, 8.0, does not 
come with the compiler and other build tools, though perhaps that 
has changed since, I haven't checked recently.

> You should make sure this is clear at the top of any wiki entry.
>
> Perhaps a future push to convince Walter to port DMD-Win32 to 
> COFF/WinSDK
> aswell might be nice ;)
> Win32 is still an important platform for many (most?) users.
I agree.  I wonder how much more work COFF32 would be, ie why it 
wasn't done in the first place.  I was surprised when I started 
using D on Windows how painful the OMF/COFF situation was, 
especially since Windows support has long been pointed at as a 
strength for D.

Great work to make it this easy on Win64, :) COFF32 would push D 
the rest of the way.