Nefarius.Tools.WDKWhere 1.0.0

Prefix Reserved
.NET 8.0 This package targets .NET 8.0. The package is compatible with this framework or higher.
There is a newer version of this package available.
See the version list below for details. 
dotnet tool install --global Nefarius.Tools.WDKWhere --version 1.0.0
This package contains a .NET tool you can call from the shell/command line. 
dotnet new tool-manifest # if you are setting up this repo
dotnet tool install --local Nefarius.Tools.WDKWhere --version 1.0.0
This package contains a .NET tool you can call from the shell/command line. 
#tool dotnet:?package=Nefarius.Tools.WDKWhere&version=1.0.0                

                    
                

            
nuke :add-package Nefarius.Tools.WDKWhere --version 1.0.0

<img src="assets/NSS-128x128.png" align="left" />Nefarius.Tools.WDKWhere

Requirements Nuget Nuget

CLI tool that resolves Windows SDK installation paths.

Motivation

This meeting could've been an email!

And this tool could've been a shell script 😅 wdkwhere was inspired by vswhere but for locating the Windows SDK installation folders instead. The SDK hosts quite a few nifty everyday developer binaries like signtool which by default are not easily invokable on the Terminal or in scripts since their respective directories are all not added to e.g. the PATH environment variable.

Granted, this could be somewhat automated via registry queries in PowerShell or even the CMD, or Python/VBS scripts and alike, but why not use a nice language like C# and make it a dotnet tool instead!

Installation

dotnet tool install --global Nefarius.Tools.WDKWhere

Usage examples

To display the help text and see all available flags run either wdkwhere query --help or wdkwhere run --help.

Basic usage

Calling wdkwhere without arguments simply returns the bin directory for the latest local WDK version and the current operating system architecture (most likely X64):

PS C:\Users\Administrator> wdkwhere
C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\10\Bin\10.0.22621.0\X64
PS C:\Users\Administrator>

Advanced usage

You can also directly run applications shipped with the WDK by using the run verb; here's how to verify a PE file signature with signtool and without having to deal with the installation path whatsoever:

PS C:\Users\Administrator> wdkwhere run signtool verify /pa /v C:\Windows\System32\consent.exe

Verifying: C:\Windows\System32\consent.exe

Signature Index: 0 (Primary Signature)
Hash of file (sha256): 829722E8F4EC6297337F26527AC4BB38D375605A0B36CF32988BDA0735ACF2C3

Signing Certificate Chain:
    ...truncated...

Successfully verified: C:\Windows\System32\consent.exe

Number of files successfully Verified: 1
Number of warnings: 0
Number of errors: 0
PS C:\Users\Administrator>

Both stdout and stderr of the invoked application are redirected to the current Terminal session and the exit code of the wdkwhere process is set to the invoked command exit code, so behaviour in scripts is basically unaltered to running the commands directly.

3rd party credits

Product Compatible and additional computed target framework versions.
.NET net8.0 is compatible.  net8.0-android was computed.  net8.0-browser was computed.  net8.0-ios was computed.  net8.0-maccatalyst was computed.  net8.0-macos was computed.  net8.0-tvos was computed.  net8.0-windows was computed. 
Compatible target framework(s)
Included target framework(s) (in package)
Learn more about Target Frameworks and .NET Standard.

This package has no dependencies.