These instructions are for Linux and Windows.
It is strongly suggested that you first install a Vulkan-capable driver, obtained from your graphics hardware vendor.
Note: The sample Vulkan Intel driver for Linux (ICD) has been moved to the VulkanTools repo. Further instructions regarding the ICD are available there.
If you intend to contribute, the preferred work flow is to fork the repo, create a branch in your forked repo, do the work, and create a pull request on GitHub to integrate that work back into the repo.
To create your local git repository:
git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers # Or substitute the URL from your forked repo for https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers above.
The build process uses cmake and should work with the usual cmake options and utilities. The build generates the loader, layers, and tests.
This repo has been built and tested on Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS, 14.10, 15.04 and 15.10. It should be straightforward to use it on other Linux distros.
These packages should be installed
sudo apt-get install git cmake build-essential bison libxcb1-dev
Example debug build:
cd YOUR_DEV_DIRECTORY # cd to the root of the Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers git repository ./update_external_sources.sh # Fetches and builds glslang and spirv-tools cmake -H. -Bdbuild -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug cd dbuild make
To run Vulkan programs you must tell the icd loader where to find the libraries. This is described in a specification.
This specification describes both how ICDs and layers should be properly packaged, and how developers can point to ICDs and layers within their builds.
For example, you may wish to point to your just-built loader and layers with:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<path to your build root>/dbuild/loader export VK_LAYER_PATH=<path to your build root>/dbuild/layers
The test executables can be found in the dbuild/tests directory. The tests use the Google gtest infrastructure. Tests available so far:
There are also a few shell and Python scripts that run test collections (eg, run_all_tests.sh
).
The demos executables can be found in the dbuild/demos directory.
Windows 7+ with additional required software packages:
Optional software packages:
Cygwin is used in order to obtain a local copy of the Git repository, and to run the CMake command that creates Visual Studio files. Visual Studio is used to build the software, and will re-run CMake as appropriate.
Example debug x64 build (e.g. in a "Developer Command Prompt for VS2013" window):
cd YOUR_DEV_DIRECTORY # cd to the root of the Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers git repository update_external_sources.bat --all build_windows_targets.bat
At this point, you can use Windows Explorer to launch Visual Studio by double-clicking on the "VULKAN.sln" file in the \build folder. Once Visual Studio comes up, you can select "Debug" or "Release" from a drop-down list. You can start a build with either the menu (Build->Build Solution), or a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Shift+B). As part of the build process, Python scripts will create additional Visual Studio files and projects, along with additional source files. All of these auto-generated files are under the "build" folder.
Vulkan programs must be able to find and use the vulkan-1.dll libary. Make sure it is either installed in the C:\Windows\System32 folder, or the PATH environment variable includes the folder that it is located in.
To run Vulkan programs you must tell the icd loader where to find the libraries. This is described in a specification.
This specification describes both how ICDs and layers should be properly packaged, and how developers can point to ICDs and layers within their builds.
If you plan on creating a Windows Install file (done in the windowsRuntimeInstaller sub-directory) you will need to build for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows since both versions of EXEs and DLLs exist simultaneously on Windows 64.
To do this, simply create and build the release versions of each target:
cd LoaderAndTools # cd to the root of the Vulkan git repository update_external_sources.bat --all mkdir build cd build cmake -G "Visual Studio 12 Win64" .. msbuild ALL_BUILD.vcxproj /p:Platform=x64 /p:Configuration=Release mkdir build32 cd build32 cmake -G "Visual Studio 12" .. msbuild ALL_BUILD.vcxproj /p:Platform=x86 /p:Configuration=Release