erupted 1.3.0

ErupteD

Automatically-generated D bindings for Vulkan based on D-Vulkan. Acquiring Vulkan functions is based on Intel API without Secrets

Usage

The bindings have two configurations: the default configuration, where the bindings load few functions (see bellow) from the vkGetInstanceProcAddr, which you supply when loading and the with-derelict-loader configuration, which uses the Derelict library to load vkGetInstanceProcAddr for you.

To use in the default configuration:

1. Import via import erupted;.
2. Get a pointer to the vkGetInstanceProcAddr, through platform-specific means (e.g. loading the Vulkan shared library, or glfwGetInstanceProcAddress if using GLFW).
3. Call loadGlobalLevelFunctions(getProcAddr), where getProcAddr is the address of the loaded vkGetInstanceProcAddr function, to load the following functions:
   • vkGetInstanceProcAddr (sets the global variable from the passed value)
   • vkCreateInstance
   • vkEnumerateInstanceExtensionProperties
   • vkEnumerateInstanceLayerProperties
4. Create a VkInstance using the above functions.
5. Call loadInstanceLevelFunctions(VkInstance) to load additional VkInstance related functions. Get information about available physical devices (e.g. GPU(s), APU(s), etc.) and physical device related resources (e.g. Queue Families, Queues per Family, etc. )
6. Now three options are available to acquire a logical device and device resource related functions (functions with first param of VkDevice, VkQueue or VkCommandBuffer):
   • Call loadDeviceLevelFunctions(VkInstance), the acquired functions call indirectly through the VkInstance and will be internally dispatched by the implementation
   • Call loadDeviceLevelFunctions(VkDevice), the acquired functions call directly the VkDevice and related resources. This path is faster, skips one indirection, but (in theory, not tested yet!) is useful only in a single physical deveice environment. Calling the same function with another VkDevice should overwrite (this is the not tested theory) all the previously fetched __gshared function
   • Call createDispatchDeviceLevelFunctions(VkDevice) and capture the result, which is a struct with all the device level fuction pointers kind of namespaced in that struct. This should avoid collisions.

To use in the with-derelict-loader configuration, follow the above steps, but call EruptedDerelict.load() instead of performing steps two and three.

Available configurations:

• with-derelict-loader fetches derelictUtil, gets a pointer to vkGetInstanceProcAddr and loads few additional global functions (see above)

The API is similar to the C Vulkan API, but with some differences:

• Named enums in D are not global but they are forwarded into global scope. Hence e.g. VkResult.VK_SUCCESS and VK_SUCCESS can both be used.
• All structures have their sType field set to the appropriate value upon initialization; explicit initialization is not needed.
• VkPipelineShaderStageCreateInfo.module has been renamed to VkPipelineShaderStageCreateInfo._module, since module is a D keyword.

Examples can be found in the examples directory, and ran with dub run erupted:examplename

Platform surface extensions

The usage of a third party library like glfw3 is highly recommended instead of vulkan platforms. Dlang has only one official platform binding in phobos which is for windows found in module core.sys.windows.windows. Other bindings to XCB, XLIB and Wayland can be found in the dub registry and are supported experimentally. However, if you wish to create vulkan surface(s) yourself you have three choices:

1. The dub way, this is experimental. Currently only three bindings are listed in the registry, dub fetches them and adds them to the erupted build dependency when you specify these sub configurations in your projects dub.json. Add -derelict-loader to the config name if you want to be able to laod vkGetInstanceProcAddr from derelict:

   • XCB specify "subConfigurations" : { "erupted" : "dub-platform-xcb" }
   • XLIB specify "subConfigurations" : { "erupted" : "dub-platform-xlib" }
   • Wayland specify "subConfigurations" : { "erupted" : "dub-platform-wayland" }

2. The symlink (or copy/move) way. If you like to play with bindings yourself this might be the way for you. Drawback is that you need to add the symlink into any erupted version you use and that your binding is not automatically tracked by dub.

   • Create a directory/module-path setup similar to those in erupted/types.d (I myself have these paths from the c header vk_platform.h) and symlink this the root under ErupeD/sources as sibling to ErupeD/sources/erupted.
   • You also need to specify the corresponding vulkan version in your projects dub.json versions block. E.g. to use XCB you need to specify "versions" : [ "VK_USE_PLATFORM_XCB_KHR" ].

3. The source- and importPaths way. This is if you don't want to add stuff to the ErupteD project structure. Drawback here is that neither erupted nor the binding are automatically tracked by dub, you need to check yourself for any updates. In your project remove the erupted dependency and add:

   • "sourcePaths" : [ "path/to/ErupteD/source", "path/to/binding/source" ]
   • "importPaths" : [ "path/to/ErupteD/source", "path/to/binding/source" ]

Additional info:

• for windows platform, in your project specify: "versions" : [ "VK_USE_PLATFORM_WIN32_KHR" ]. The phobos windows modules will be used in that case.
• wayland-client.h cannot exist as module name. The maintainer of wayland-client-d choose wayland.client as module name and the name is used in erupted/types as well.

Generating Bindings

To erupt the vulkan-docs yourself (Requires Python 3 and lxml.etree) download the Vulkan-Docs repo and call erupt.py passing path/to/vulkan-docs as first argument and an output folder for the D files as second argument.

Additions to D-Vulkan

• Platform surface extensions
• ~~DerelictLoader for Posix Systems~~
• With respect to API without Secrets D-Vulkans function loading system is partially broken