HLSL Console Tools

If you've already followed the instructions in the README.md to get started, congratulations! We hope you have some fun on this with us.

One of the things that may have surprised you is the use of a "special" console, the HLSL Console, which you should have on your desktop if everything went well and you created the shortcut. There is really nothing special about this - the shortcut simply invokes a batch file to set up some environment variables to select source and build target directories, and then places some commands on the path to make it easy to work with the project.

I'm a big believer in being able to have single, simple commands to do everyday tasks, and so here's a brief summary of what you can do.

• hctclean: deletes all solution, generated and built files
• hctbuild: recreates the solution and builds the sources
• hcttest: runs compiler tests, and tries to run execution tests as well (the latter uses Direct3D to run the shaders and observe their behavior, so there are more things that need to line up properly)
• hctcheckin: runs hctclean, hctbuild and hcttest; if this succeeds, you're good to go - at least as far as the automated processes can tell

You can run hcthelp when you are on the console for a quick summary, and all the commands will accept a '-?' argument to provide more information on additional switches and settings.

Enjoy!

PS: those who have been reading this blog for a long time may not that this is not the first time something like this comes up.