Microsoft Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit by Microsoft Press, Microsoft Corporation

From the Publisher

Drivers are the most fundamental and technically difficult part of an operating system to develop, so good printed documentation is essential to making them work properly. The Microsoft Windows 2000 Driver Development Kit (DDK) includes driver development resources and sample source code for many Windows 2000 drivers, including those that follow the Windows Driver Model specification, which defines a unified driver model for the Windows 98 and Windows 2000 operating systems. In addition, the DDK includes design and reference documentation for developing Windows 2000 drivers, including WDM drivers. While this DDK is available online and on CD-ROM, this three-volume set is the only printed version of these essential resources, and it's been edited to include the most-relevant and useful materials.

• The must-have reference for anyone who needs to use the Microsoft Windows Driver Development Kit in Windows development
• It's the only printed version of these essential information resources, and it includes links to vital supporting information on the Microsoft Web site
• Provides the official Windows Driver design and reference information straight from the source--Microsoft
• Conveniently offers the Windows DDK software plus the most-relevant and useful reference materials about the Windows DDK--all of it printed, edited, and indexed
• Developers can use sample code that the Windows DDK discusses in developing their own drivers
• Includes three volums covering the driver specifications and indexed references Development Kit

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Chapter 1 Driver Development Environment

If the driver depends on underlying devices that include high-end workstations and servers, the driver should also be debugged and tested on a multiprocessor machine.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• 1.1 Free Build and Checked Build

• 1.2 Debugging Environment

1.1 Free Build and Checked Build

• The free build (or retail build) is the end-user version of the operating system. The system and drivers are built with full optimization, debugging asserts are disabled, and debugging information is stripped from the binaries. A free system and driver is smaller and faster, and it uses less memory.

• The checked build serves as a testing and debugging aid in the developing of the operating system and of kernel-mode drivers. The checked build contains extra error checking, argument verification, and debugging information that is not available in the free build. A checked system or driver can help isolate and track down driver problems that can cause unpredictable behavior, result in memory leaks, or result in improper device configuration.

Although the checked build provides extra protection, it consumes more memory anddisk space than the free build. System and driver performance is slower for the following reasons:

• The executables contain symbolic debugging information.

• Additional code paths are executed due to parameter checking and debug output (diagnostic messages).

New driver development usually involves the following steps

1. Writing the driver code, which should include debugging checks that are flagged for conditional compilation

2. Testing and debugging a checked version of the driver on a checked build of the operating system

3. Testing and debugging the free version of the driver on a free build

4. Performance tuning of the driver on the free build

5. Additional testing and debugging using both checked and free builds of the driver and the operating system

6. Final testing and verification using the free build

In the early stages of driver development it is necessary to use the checked build of Windows 2000 to debug the driver. The additional debugging code in the checked build has protections against many errors that drivers can make (such as recursive spin locks).

Performance tuning, final testing, and verification of the driver should be done on the free build. The faster speed of the free build makes it possible to detect race conditions and other synchronization problems.

Final testing and verification should also be done on the free build since the free build is the same as the retail version of Windows 2000.

The driver code generally contains preprocessor symbols which allow it to be compiled into both free and checked versions.

The DBG flag is a reserved symbol that can be used during compilation to determine what build of Windows 2000 is running. If the Windows 2000 checked build is running, DBG is set to 1. If the free build is running, DBG is undefined (or it is set to zero if either the wdm.h or ntddk.h header files are included).

Drivers also should be tested and debugged on at least one multiprocessor platform and on at least one uniprocessor platform; both platforms should be running the current version of Windows 2000.

1.2 Debugging Environment