exomia / vulkan-api

The exomia/vulkan-api repository contains .NET bindings providing low-level and cross-platform access to the Vulkan API.

Information

The exomia/vulkan-api repository contains .NET bindings providing low-level and cross-platform access to the Vulkan API.
The bindings and documentation are generated using the KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Docs repository.

It is meant to be as close as possible to the original Vulkan API written in C. see example

Features

• Vulkan 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 0.0
• All platforms except provisional, sci
• All extensions including vk_video
• Raw low level bindings using unsafe C# code
• cross platform

Example

With Exomia.Vulkan.Api you can create a Vulkan instance like this:

C#

using Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Core;
using static Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Core.Vk;

// ...

VkApplicationInfo applicationInfo;
applicationInfo.sType              = VkApplicationInfo.STYPE;
applicationInfo.pNext              = null;
applicationInfo.pApplicationName   = Allocator.AllocateNtString("my app"); // "Allocator" not included in the Exomia.Vulkan.Api
applicationInfo.applicationVersion = new VkVersion(0, 1, 0, 0);
applicationInfo.pEngineName        = Allocator.AllocateNtString("my engine"); // "Allocator" not included in the Exomia.Vulkan.Api
applicationInfo.engineVersion      = new VkVersion(0, 1, 0, 0);
applicationInfo.apiVersion         = VkVersion.VulkanApiVersion13;

VkInstanceCreateInfo instanceCreateInfo;
instanceCreateInfo.sType                   = VkInstanceCreateInfo.STYPE;
instanceCreateInfo.pNext                   = null;
instanceCreateInfo.flags                   = 0;
instanceCreateInfo.pApplicationInfo        = &applicationInfo;
instanceCreateInfo.enabledLayerCount       = 0u;
instanceCreateInfo.ppEnabledLayerNames     = null;
instanceCreateInfo.enabledExtensionCount   = 0u;
instanceCreateInfo.ppEnabledExtensionNames = null;

VkInstance instance;
VkResult result = vkCreateInstance(&instanceCreateInfo, null, &instance);

C/C++ comparison

VkApplicationInfo applicationInfo = {};
applicationInfo.sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_APPLICATION_INFO;
applicationInfo.pApplicationName = "my app";
applicationInfo.applicationVersion = VK_MAKE_VERSION(0, 1, 0, 0);
applicationInfo.pEngineName = "my engine";
applicationInfo.engineVersion = VK_MAKE_VERSION(0, 1, 0, 0);
applicationInfo.apiVersion = VK_API_VERSION_1_3;

VkInstanceCreateInfo instanceCreateInfo = {};
instanceCreateInfo.sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_INSTANCE_CREATE_INFO;
instanceCreateInfo.pApplicationInfo = &applicationInfo;
instanceCreateInfo.enabledLayerCount = 0;
instanceCreateInfo.enabledExtensionCount = 0;

VkInstance instance;
VkResult result = vkCreateInstance(&instanceCreateInfo, nullptr, &instance)

Extensions

loading extensions is also possible (do not forget to enable them first):

// <extension name>.Load(instance[, device]);
VkExtDebugUtils.Load(instance);

after loading the extension functions can be used:

using static Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Core.VkExtDebugUtils;

// ...

VkDebugUtilsMessengerCreateInfoEXT debugUtilsMessengerCreateInfoExt;
debugUtilsMessengerCreateInfoExt.sType = VkDebugUtilsMessengerCreateInfoEXT.STYPE;
debugUtilsMessengerCreateInfoExt.pNext = null;
debugUtilsMessengerCreateInfoExt.flags = 0u;

// ...

VkDebugUtilsMessengerEXT debugUtilsMessengerExt;
VkResult result = vkCreateDebugUtilsMessengerEXT(instance, &debugUtilsMessengerCreateInfoExt, null, &debugUtilsMessengerExt);

// ...

Installing

Core

[Package Manager]
PM> Install-Package Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Core

Platform

[Package Manager]
PM> Install-Package Exomia.Vulkan.Api.<Platform>

replace <Platform> with a platform name of the following table

platform name	comment
Xlib	X Window System, Xlib client library
Xlib_xrandr	X Window System, Xlib client library, XRandR extension
Xcb	X Window System, Xcb client library
Wayland	Wayland display server protocol
Directfb	DirectFB library
Android	Android OS
Win32	Microsoft Win32 API (also refers to Win64 apps)
Vi	Nintendo Vi
Ios	Apple IOS
Macos	Apple MacOS
Metal	Metal on CoreAnimation on Apple platforms
Fuchsia	Fuchsia
Ggp	Google Games Platform
Screen	QNX Screen Graphics Subsystem

see Exomia.Vulkan.Api packages on nuget

Changelog

can be found here

Building

Core

To build Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Core, open Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Core.sln in Visual Studio 2022 and build the solution. Alternatively you can also build it on the command line, run the dotnet build Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Core.sln command.

Platforms

In order to be able to build Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Platforms, make sure that the core package is available in one of your nuget feeds. To build Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Platforms, open Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Platforms.sln in Visual Studio 2022 and build the solution. Alternatively you can also build it on the command line, run the dotnet build Exomia.Vulkan.Api.Platforms.sln command.

Q&A, Ideas or Show & tell us

You have questions, ideas or want to show or tell us something?
Open a new discussion or join an existing one!

---

Social

vulkan-api's Issues

Only keep the newest "X" releases and tags

In order to keep the repository clean, we should think about removing old release branches and tags;
-> The packages will be kept.
(-> we could also keep the tags!?)

Describe the solution you'd like
We could perform this cleanup with a github action running after a release removing the oldest ones until we have reached our number we want to keep.

Describe alternatives you've considered
In the case somebody would need an older version we could also regenerate it and make it available for download again.

Update to .Net 7

• UTF-8 string literals
• LibraryImportAttribute

Provisional support & parsing/including video.xml

Adjust the usage of the "Obsolete-Attributes"

Adjust the usage of the "Obsolete-Attributes" based on #5

Some extensions will not load.

Some device extensions that also provide VkInstance based commands are not loaded due to errors in the loading function and will throw entry point not found error.

Linux implementation

update to .net6 and language version 10