MGCB Sample

A minimal MonoGame content-pipeline sample (samples/mgcb) that builds a broad slice of the test shader corpus two ways over the same sources, so the MGCB content-processor plugin can be compared against MonoGame's own compiler side by side.

The two content projects

File	Compiler	Output
Content/Content.mgcb	MonoGame's own in-process effect compiler (stock EffectImporter / EffectProcessor)	Content/bin/DesktopGL/
Content/Content.ShadowDusk.mgcb	ShadowDusk, via /reference: + ShadowDuskEffectImporter / ShadowDuskEffectProcessor	Content/bin/shadowdusk/DesktopGL/

Both target DesktopGL / Reach. The two files differ in exactly three ways: the output directories, the /reference: line, and the importer/processor names.

Note

Ten of the 34 effects are deliberately absent from the ShadowDusk variant — BasicEffect, AlphaTestEffect, DualTextureEffect, EnvironmentMapEffect, SkinnedEffect, SpriteEffect, and the four Penumbra* effects. All ten declare their techniques through preprocessor macros, which ShadowDusk's OpenGL path cannot yet compile (SD0010). That is a compiler-library gap, identical through the ShadowDusk CLI — the plugin adds no compilation logic, so it inherits exactly what the library supports. They stay in Content.mgcb so the difference stays visible rather than hidden.

Important

This sample was originally written on the belief that MGCB shells out to an mgfxc on PATH, so exposing ShadowDusk's CLI under that name would route the build through it. Measurement on 2026-07-28 disproved that for dotnet mgcb 3.8.2.1105, 3.8.4.1, and 3.8.5: MGCB compiles .fx in-process and never invokes an external mgfxc. The Content.ShadowDusk.mgcb variant is the route that does work — a /reference:d content-processor plugin.

Run it

cd samples/mgcb

# MonoGame's own compiler
dotnet mgcb /@:Content/Content.mgcb

# ShadowDusk, in MGCB's own process
dotnet build ../../src/ShadowDusk.MgcbPlugin/ShadowDusk.MgcbPlugin.csproj
cd Content && dotnet mgcb /@:Content.ShadowDusk.mgcb && cd ..

dotnet run                              # runs the host

The sample's /reference: points at the repo build output. A consumer of the published package points at the package's tools/net8.0/any/ directory instead — see MGCB Content Pipeline.

Compiling the same shaders with the CLI still works too, and is the route for a build script that does not use MGCB at all:

dotnet tool install --global ShadowDusk.Cli   # installs the `ShadowDuskCLI` command
ShadowDuskCLI ../../tests/fixtures/shaders/Grayscale.fx Grayscale.mgfx /Profile:OpenGL

Files

File	Role
MGCBSample.csproj	the host project
Program.cs	MonoGame host entry point
Content/Content.mgcb	the content build that compiles the .fx corpus with MonoGame's own compiler
Content/Content.ShadowDusk.mgcb	the same corpus compiled by ShadowDusk through the MGCB plugin