How to program kernel drivers for windows without visual studio? - c

Question

Everytime I see a driver tutorial I see they use visual studio, I was just wondering if it is absolutely required to install it in order to develop windows drivers?
Say for example I would like to compile the following driver: (source)
NTSTATUS DriverEntry(PDRIVER_OBJECT DriverObject, PUNICODE_STRING RegistryPath)
{
DbgPrint("Hello World\n");
return STATUS_SUCCESS;
}
How would I be able to compile/link it without visual studio? I have searched all over the place.

Answer 1

The linked tutorials are based on older WDK builds. You can get the old WDK and follow the tutorial, but I don't really recommend it.
Recently, the common way to develop Windows drivers is to use Visual Studio, but there is also a similar approach to the tutorial, which is developed from the command line environment.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/develop/using-the-enterprise-wdk
Of course, you don't have to install Visual Studio as using EWDK.

Answer 2

If you would like to use a different IDE then you must use the Enterprise Windows Driver Kit (EWDK) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/develop/using-the-enterprise-wdk
After downloading and unzipping the archive you will need to launch LaunchBuildEnv.cmd and then run MsBuild.
Example:
Msbuild my_driver_project.vcxproj /p:configuration=debug /p:platform=x64
This assumes that you will write your own vcxproj file. Details about the file format here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/reference/vcxproj-file-structure?view=vs-2019 and you could look at some driver samples from Microsoft here: https://github.com/microsoft/Windows-driver-samples
If you are just starting out with Windows Drivers I would say that using Visual Studio and WDK is a good idea because you can concentrate more on core Driver Development concepts and after you have something working you can write your own vcxproj file and use the eWDK. Having some examples of vcxproj files is useful.
If you do go down the Visual Studio route you can use Visual Studio Community edition which is free for non-commercial use.
It is important to install Visual Studio prior to WDK because the WDK is essentially a plugin to Visual Studio.
Additional instructions and download links for Visual Studio and WDK https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/download-the-wdk