[Mingw-users] Re: [MinGW] DirectX

[<rr...@cs...>]

>I"ve had to create some Dx program lately and noticed that some headers
>didn"t exist in the latest w32api dist (d3dx9*.h files such as d3dx9tex.h,
>d3dx9mesh.h)

You might want to try using the header files from the DirectX SDK.
They're compatable with GCC, though I'm not sure if they're compatible
with the w32api headers.

>Independently, I"ve tried to link with the libs that contain the D3DX*
>functions. When running the program, it fails saying that the d3dx9d.dll
>was not found. Does anybody know where that file can be found ? It"s
>not in the latest DX SDK nor the 9.?c release.
 
The debug DLL version of the D3DX library (D3DX9D.DLL) was never part of
the end-user runtime of any version of DirectX and was only available
as a non-redistributable part of the DirectX SDK.  Before Feburary
of this year, the "retail" version of the D3DX library was a static
library, and there was no DLL version of it that end users could use.
Starting in Feburary, Microsoft decided to make the end-user version
of the D3DX library a DLL so that they could fix critical flaws in
the library through Windows update.  This DLL has a suffix number in
it's name to indicate what version of the D3DX library it implements
(eg. D3DX9_24.DLL corresponds to the Feburary 2005 SDK).

Never link an application you're distributing to other people with the
a debug DLL version of D3DX library.  The only way they can legally get
a copy of the DLL is to download and install the appropriate version of
the DirectX SDK.  Unfortunately, it's not that much if you link your
application with one of the newer retail DLL versions of the library.
In that case you need to provide the user with the DirectX end-user
runtime redistributable from the version of the SDK you're using.
The end-user runtime that's availabe to download from Microsoft
doesn't contain the D3DX DLL, and there's no other way an end user can
legitimately obtain and install the DLL.  Still, using the new DLL version
of the D3DX library with MinGW is a lot nicer than the old static version
which required a lot of workaounds.

						Ross Ridge

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