I’m making a specific post about this because I keep getting asked even though it’s in the README – Ogre will compile under the DirectX 8 SDK even though the code I’ve written is for DirectX 7. You just have to change your linker settings to link d3d8.lib instead of d3dim.lib.
I won’t be porting Ogre to the Dx8 SDK, I’ll wait until Dx9 is out. Ogre and it’s predecessors have been through several DirectX ports in the past and with v8 I just didn’t think it was worth the hassle – most of the D3D improvements from 7 to 8 were aesthetic (DirectDraw and D3D merged, a few of the crappier interfaces cleaned up), or improvements to D3DX to make it easier to code D3D, which I hide anyway, so upgrading to v8 held little appeal to me since it would have taken time to port to and re-test for little tangible benefit. The only new major feature was pixel shaders, and whilst these are nice they’re just not mature enough yet (in terms of both standards and in installed base) so are best left to tech demos for the moment in my view.
I’ve used my time more usefully developing engine features rather than performing an API upgrade. Real tangible features matter more to me than keeping up with the latest DirectX SDK version when there is no justification for it.
I will probably port to Dx9 when I get it so I don’t get too behind, so it probbaly won’t suffer the same fate as my Dx8 SDK disk and get used as a coffee mat. 😉