Releases

The following table provides important information about released versions of the compiler components. The compiler releases as dxcompiler.dll, and can be recognized by the !llvm.ident value produced in DXIL modules. The validator releases as dxil.dll, and can be identified by a runtime query; the rules applies can be identified via DXIL metadata.

The latest release including the dxcompiler.dll library, the dxc.exe executable, and the dxil.dll validator library can be downloaded from the GitHub project releases tab.

Release	Files	Version
June 2021	dxc.exe, dxcompiler.dll, dxil.dll	1.6.2106
April 2021	dxc.exe, dxcompiler.dll, dxil.dll	1.6.2104
October 2020	dxc.exe, dxcompiler.dll, dxil.dll	1.5.2010
March 2020 pre-release	dxc.exe, dxcompiler.dll, dxil.dll	1.5.2003

The compiler binaries are also shipped along with the Windows SDK. These releases lag behind the GitHub releases considerably, but allow shader compilation with Visual Studio without any additional effort.

Information on the latest Windows SDK release:

Release	File	File version	Notes
Windows 10, version 21H1	dxil.dll	10.0.19041.685	validator v1.5
Windows 10, version 21H1 SDK	dxcompiler.dll	10.0.19041.685	!llvm.ident:dxc 1.5

The compiler version can be accessed from shader code using the Predefined Version Macros __DXC_VERSION_MAJOR, __DXC_VERSION_MINOR, __DXC_VERSION_RELEASE, __DXC_VERSION_COMMITS representing the 4-part version string produced by dxc -? or dxc --version