Build environments for latest DDK and SDK

[Ryan]

Hi all,

Can anyone tell me the differences between the build.exe compiler in
the DDK and the latest Visual Studio 2008 VC++ compiler? It seems that
they are similar / the same but I see warnings not to use Visual
Studio. Is this just because it is a pig to set up the environment
vars and conditional compilation statements?

I'd prefer to use Visual Studio, especially since it installs the
latest SDK alongside. I know the long term plan from MS was to have
the driver development environment available in VS as well.

I have the source for a printer driver compiling under the DDK already
so hopefully it should not be too much hassle. Perhaps I develop under
that and deploy under build.exe.

Any insights would be very helpful, I'm new to the DDK and driver
development in general.

Regards

Ryan

[Don Burn]

Actually, I have never heard that there was a long term plan to put driver
development into VS. This has been asked for years at conferences, and
comes in well down the list of desired things.

I don't know for printers since they are user space, but I have seen the VS
compiler (with almost the same rev number as the DDK compiler) mess up
kernel drivers. In one case the customer spent weeks debugging something,
and called me in, I rebuilt the code using build and the DDK compiler and
the problem disappeared. I would never accpect a kernel driver built other
than the BUILD environment.

I you want the GUI and browsing take a look at DDK build available from
http://www.hollistech.com/ or from http://www.osronline.com/ this is a
script that allows you to use VS with the actual work still done by BUILD.
I've been building drivers this way for 12 years.

--
Don Burn (MVP, Windows DDK)
Windows 2k/XP/2k3 Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/WinDrvr
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[Ryan]

On Jan 15, 1:37 pm, "Don Burn" <b...@stopspam.windrvr.com> wrote:
> Actually, I have never heard that there was a long term plan to put driver
> development into VS. This has been asked for years at conferences, and
> comes in well down the list of desired things.
>
> I don't know for printers since they are user space, but I have seen the VS
> compiler (with almost the same rev number as the DDK compiler) mess up
> kernel drivers. In one case the customer spent weeks debugging something,
> and called me in, I rebuilt the code using build and the DDK compiler and
> the problem disappeared. I would never accpect a kernel driver built other
> than the BUILD environment.
>

> I you want the GUI and browsing take a look at DDK build available fromhttp://www.hollistech.com/or fromhttp://www.osronline.com/this is a

Thanks Don, I'll take your advice.

[<Tanya Radeva {MSFT]@discussions.microsoft.com >]

Hi Ryan,

We are currently looking at the integration of WDK into the Visual Studio
and integrating the WDK build environment into the VS is a part of it. You
are not supposed to use VS build system to build drivers, you have to do it
through WDK build environment.

We are always glad to hear from novice driver developers about their
difficulties and how we can help to make life better.

Please feel free to give a feedback about what we can improve in WDK so it
becomes a great environment to develop drivers. We believe that integration
with VS is one right step in that direction.

Best regards,
Tanya