Is there a flag or something that needs to be set somewhere to allow multi pass shaders to be complied?

I'm getting the following error when I try.

"Technique pass count!=1"

I've set the engine to work only with 1 pass, if you want more, then please instead make multiple techniques, and render each separately.

Sorry to dig this up again, but the lack of multi pass shaders is becoming a serious problem for implementing visual effects. For example, just trying to do a basic Gaussian blur shader is a real pain as you have to store the intermediate results somewhere between each pass. The only way I can see to do this is with RTT's. If you need to do a 4 pass blur, then that means 4 RTT's (and all the overhead they incur). You also need meshes for fullscreen quads as VI doesn't work with RTT. Just too much overhead for something that is already elegantly handled by the hardware.

Is there some technical limitation within EE that prevents multi pass shaders from ever being supported?
Is it something that could possibly be supported?

Hello,

multi pass does not work as you think it may work.
It's simply executing:
shader tech 1
shader tech 2

Typically for 4 passes you don't do:
A->B->C->D (where each is a separate render target) but:
A->B->A->B