A few months ago, as my first real foray into C# programming, I wrote a small program/dll that allowed me to compile .hlsl and .fx files directly into COFF files that I could link into my program. It worked great for a few months. Now I'm having a small problem.

In writing the dll I used the SharpDx package to get access to the D3DCompiler API. It seems by default this uses an older version of the d3dcompiler_XX.dll (I think its version 43, I don't remember exactly). I need to use a more recent version of the compiler dll, in particular I would like to use d3dcompiler_47.dll. Being somewhat of a noob when it comes to C#, I haven't been able to figure how to do it. Googling didn't turn up anything useful and I tried copying d3dcompiler_47.dll to various directories with no avail. Anyone have and ideas?

I used the nuget packages, and read through the link you provided (much appreciated) but was still unable to get it to use the newer d3dcompiler_47.dll. I never used C# before this so I'm probably making a silly mistake. I added an App.config file (using the project->add new item wizard) and in there added <SharpDXDirectXVersion>DirectX11_2</SharpDXDirectXVersion>. I'm not sure if I'm not doing the right thing, or if I added it to the wrong place, and TBH I don't even know what a config variable is.

On another note, why not precompile with fxc and embed .cso files (compiled shader object) instead? This is what I do.

That worked, thank-you very much

@Fredricvo: This does 1 better. I used C# because its works as an custom build step integrated with VS. So I add the .hlsl or .fx files as you would, but under 'item type' I select my task instead of the default hlsl compiler. It compiles the code and instead of saving it as a .cso file as COFF object which can be directly linked into the executable, and which is done automatically. I can give it whatever variable name I want and even use namespaces. It's really easy. I don't need to worry about custom build steps or anything, its all handled automatically for me.

I should also add. There are only two problems I have with it. 1st is that effects are deprecated for the newer compiler; which both annoys and baffles me to no end. Also the MSBuild scripting is not well documented, and so there are still small quirks that I need to work out. The latter I can fix, the former... serves me right for using MS I guess...