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.

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:

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