DMD Windows 64bit target - how to setup the environment?

[Benjamin Thaut]

On Monday, 25 December 2017 at 16:35:26 UTC, realhet wrote:
> Now I have my first DMD 64bit windows console app running. (And 
> I'm already afraid of the upcoming windowed application haha)


My recommendation for getting setup on Windows with D is as 
follows:

1) Install the latest visual studio community version: 
https://www.visualstudio.com/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=Community&rel=15
2) Install dmd through the windows installer: 
https://dlang.org/download.html , exe option under windows. This 
will correctly configure dmd to use the visual studio install 
from above. From here on dmd will be able to compiler with -m64 
and -m32mscoff from the command line.
3) Install VisualD from 
http://rainers.github.io/visuald/visuald/StartPage.html
4) Create a D project in visual studio and start programming. 
Compile and debug as usual in Visual Studio.


For you command line compilation. Why are you passing -c to the 
compiler? The idea behind D is that you pass all modules at the 
same time to the compiler. This allows the compiler to reuse 
template instances across modules and in general compilation with 
D is fast enough to be able to recompile everything each time you 
make changes. No need for a build system. A single batch file 
with one command in it is usually enough. There is no need to 
call the linker manually. Dmd will do this for you. Just call dmd 
like this:

dmd -m64 source1.d source2.d source3.d -ofoutput.exe

and thats it. You can add additional options like -O -inline 
-noboundscheck -g -debug -relase. Those are the most commoly used 
options.

Kind Regards
Benjamin Thaut