Instructions for building this repository on Linux, Windows, Android, and MacOS.
If you intend to contribute, the preferred work flow is for you to develop your contribution in a fork of this repository in your GitHub account and then submit a pull request. Please see the CONTRIBUTING.md file in this repository for more details.
This repository does not contain a Vulkan-capable driver. Before proceeding, it is strongly recommended that you obtain a Vulkan driver from your graphics hardware vendor and install it properly.
To create your local git repository:
The loader is built using gn from the BUILD.gn files.
git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers
Windows 7+ with the following software packages:
pip module is installed (it should be by default)./update_external_sources.sh --no-buildupdate_external_sources.bat --no-syncVulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers -- the root of the cloned git repositoryupdate_external_sources.bat -- this will download and build external componentsbuild directory, change into that directory, and run cmakeFor example, for VS2017 (generators for other versions are specified here):
cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64" ..
This will create a Windows solution file named VULKAN.sln in the build directory.
Launch Visual Studio and open the “VULKAN.sln” solution file in the build folder. You may select “Debug” or “Release” from the Solution Configurations drop-down list. Start a build by selecting the Build->Build Solution menu item. This solution copies the loader it built to each program's build directory to ensure that the program uses the loader built from this solution.
Employing optional parameters to the update_external_sources.bat script can streamline repository set-up.
After making any changes to the repository, you should perform some quick sanity tests, including the run_all_tests Powershell script and the cube demo with validation enabled.
To run the validation test script, open a Powershell Console, change to the build/tests directory, and run:
For Release builds:
.\run_all_tests.ps1
For Debug builds:
.\run_all_tests.ps1 -Debug
This script will run the following tests:
vk_loader_validation_tests: Vulkan loader handle wrapping, allocation callback, and loader/layer interface testsvk_layer_validation_tests: Test Vulkan validation layersvkvalidatelayerdoc: Tests that validation database is up-to-date and is synchronized with the validation source codeTo run the Cube demo with validation in a Debug build configuration:
cube project and select Set As Startup Project--validate, and saveLocal Windows DebuggerOther demos that can be found in the build/demos directory are:
vulkaninfo: Report GPU propertiessmoketest: A “smoke” test using more complex Vulkan renderingThe above example used Visual Studio 2017, and specified its generator as “Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64”. The chosen generator should match your Visual Studio version. Appropriate Visual Studio generators include:
| Build Platform | 64-bit Generator | 32-bit Generator |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 | “Visual Studio 12 2013 Win64” | “Visual Studio 12 2013” |
| Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 | “Visual Studio 14 2015 Win64” | “Visual Studio 14 2015” |
| Microsoft Visual Studio 2017 | “Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64” | “Visual Studio 15 2017” |
Vulkan programs must be able to find and use the vulkan-1.dll library. While several of the test and demo projects in the Windows solution set this up automatically, doing so manually may be necessary for custom projects or solutions. Make sure the library is either installed in the C:\Windows\System32 folder, or that the PATH environment variable includes the folder where the library resides.
To run Vulkan programs you must tell the Vulkan Loader where to find the libraries. This is described in a LoaderAndLayerInterface document in the loader folder in this repository. This describes both how ICDs and layers should be properly packaged, and how developers can point to ICDs and layers within their builds.
This repository has been built and tested on the two most recent Ubuntu LTS versions. Currently, the oldest supported version is Ubuntu 14.04, meaning that the minimum supported compiler versions are GCC 4.8.2 and Clang 3.4, although earlier versions may work. It should be straightforward to adapt this repository to other Linux distributions.
Required Package List:
sudo apt-get install git cmake build-essential libx11-xcb-dev libxkbcommon-dev libmirclient-dev libwayland-dev libxrandr-dev
Example debug build (Note that the update_external_sources script used below builds external tools into predefined locations. See Loader and Validation Layer Dependencies for more information and other options):
In a Linux terminal, cd Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers -- the root of the cloned git repository
Execute ./update_external_sources.sh -- this will download and build external components
Create a build directory, change into that directory, and run cmake:
mkdir build cd build cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
Run make -j8 to begin the build
If your build system supports ccache, you can enable that via CMake option -DUSE_CCACHE=On
Employing optional parameters to the update_external_sources.sh script can streamline repository set-up.
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<path to your repository root>/build/loader export VK_LAYER_PATH=<path to your repository root>/build/layers
You can run the vulkaninfo application to see which driver, loader and layers are being used.
The LoaderAndLayerInterface document in the loader folder in this repository is a specification that describes both how ICDs and layers should be properly packaged, and how developers can point to ICDs and layers within their builds.
By default, the Vulkan Loader and Validation Layers are built with support for all 4 Vulkan-defined WSI display servers: Xcb, Xlib, Wayland, and Mir. It is recommended to build the repository components with support for these display servers to maximize their usability across Linux platforms. If it is necessary to build these modules without support for one of the display servers, the appropriate CMake option of the form BUILD_WSI_xxx_SUPPORT can be set to OFF. See the top-level CMakeLists.txt file for more info.
Installing the files resulting from your build to the systems directories is optional since environment variables can usually be used instead to locate the binaries. There are also risks with interfering with binaries installed by packages. If you are certain that you would like to install your binaries to system directories, you can proceed with these instructions.
Assuming that you've built the code as described above and the current directory is still build, you can execute:
sudo make install
This command installs files to:
/usr/local/include/vulkan: Vulkan include files/usr/local/lib: Vulkan loader and layers shared objects/usr/local/bin: vulkaninfo application/usr/local/etc/vulkan/explicit_layer.d: Layer JSON filesYou may need to run ldconfig in order to refresh the system loader search cache on some Linux systems.
You can further customize the installation location by setting additional CMake variables to override their defaults. For example, if you would like to install to /tmp/build instead of /usr/local, on your CMake command line specify:
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/tmp/build -DDEST_DIR=/tmp/build
Then run make install as before. The install step places the files in /tmp/build.
Using the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to customize the install location also modifies the loader search paths to include searching for layers in the specified install location. In this example, setting CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to /tmp/build causes the loader to search /tmp/build/etc/vulkan/explicit_layer.d and /tmp/build/share/vulkan/explicit_layer.d for the layer JSON files. The loader also searches the “standard” system locations of /etc/vulkan/explicit_layer.d and /usr/share/vulkan/explicit_layer.d after searching the two locations under /tmp/build.
You can further customize the installation directories by using the CMake variables CMAKE_INSTALL_SYSCONFDIR to rename the etc directory and CMAKE_INSTALL_DATADIR to rename the share directory.
See the CMake documentation for more details on using these variables to further customize your installation.
Also see the LoaderAndLayerInterface document in the loader folder in this repository for more information about loader operation.
Note that some executables in this repository (e.g., cube) use the “rpath” linker directive to load the Vulkan loader from the build directory, build in this example. This means that even after installing the loader to the system directories, these executables still use the loader from the build directory.
To uninstall the files from the system directories, you can execute:
sudo make uninstall
After making any changes to the repository, you should perform some quick sanity tests, including the run_all_tests shell script and the cube demo with validation enabled.
To run the validation test script, in a terminal change to the build/tests directory and run:
VK_LAYER_PATH=../layers ./run_all_tests.sh
This script will run the following tests:
vk_loader_validation_tests: Tests Vulkan Loader handle wrappingvk_layer_validation_tests: Test Vulkan validation layersvkvalidatelayerdoc: Tests that validation database is in up-to-date and in synchronization with the validation source codeTo run the Cube demo with validation, in a terminal change to the build/demos directory and run:
VK_LAYER_PATH=../layers ./cube --validate
Other demos that can be found in the build/demos directory are:
vulkaninfo: report GPU propertiessmoketest: A “smoke” test using more complex Vulkan renderingYou can select which WSI subsystem is used to build the demos using a CMake option called DEMOS_WSI_SELECTION. Supported options are XCB (default), XLIB, WAYLAND, and MIR. Note that you must build using the corresponding BUILD_WSI_*_SUPPORT enabled at the base repository level (all SUPPORT options are ON by default). For instance, creating a build that will use Xlib to build the demos, your CMake command line might look like:
cmake -H. -Bbuild -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DDEMOS_WSI_SELECTION=XLIB
Usage of this repository's contents in 32-bit Linux environments is not officially supported. However, since this repository is supported on 32-bit Windows, these modules should generally work on 32-bit Linux.
Here are some notes for building 32-bit targets on a 64-bit Ubuntu “reference” platform:
If not already installed, install the following 32-bit development libraries:
gcc-multilib g++-multilib libx11-dev:i386
This list may vary depending on your distribution and which windowing systems you are building for.
Set up your environment for building 32-bit targets:
export ASFLAGS=--32 export CFLAGS=-m32 export CXXFLAGS=-m32 export PKG_CONFIG_LIBDIR=/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
Again, your PKG_CONFIG configuration may be different, depending on your distribution.
If the libraries in the external directory have already been built for 64-bit targets, delete or “clean” this directory and rebuild it with the above settings using the update_external_sources shell script. This is required because the libraries in external must be built for 32-bit in order to be usable by the rest of the components in the repository.
Finally, rebuild the repository using cmake and make, as explained above.
Install the required tools for Linux and Windows covered above, then add the following.
For each of the below, you may need to specify a different build-tools version, as Android Studio will roll it forward fairly regularly.
On Linux:
export ANDROID_SDK_HOME=$HOME/Android/sdk export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=$HOME/Android/sdk/ndk-bundle export PATH=$ANDROID_SDK_HOME:$PATH export PATH=$ANDROID_NDK_HOME:$PATH export PATH=$ANDROID_SDK_HOME/build-tools/23.0.3:$PATH
On Windows:
set ANDROID_SDK_HOME=%LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\sdk set ANDROID_NDK_HOME=%LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\sdk\ndk-bundle set PATH=%LOCALAPPDATA%\Android\sdk\ndk-bundle;%PATH%
On OSX:
export ANDROID_SDK_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=$HOME/Library/Android/sdk/ndk-bundle export PATH=$ANDROID_NDK_PATH:$PATH export PATH=$ANDROID_SDK_HOME/build-tools/23.0.3:$PATH
Note: If jarsigner is missing from your platform, you can find it in the Android Studio install or in your Java installation. If you do not have Java, you can get it with something like the following:
sudo apt-get install openjdk-8-jdk
Tested on OSX version 10.13.3
Setup Homebrew and components
Follow instructions on brew.sh to get Homebrew installed.
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Ensure Homebrew is at the beginning of your PATH:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
Add packages with the following:
brew install cmake python
There are two options for building the Android layers. Either using the SPIRV tools provided as part of the Android NDK, or using upstream sources. To build with SPIRV tools from the NDK, remove the build-android/third_party directory created by running update_external_sources_android.sh, (or avoid running update_external_sources_android.sh). Use the following script to build everything in the repository for Android, including validation layers, tests, demos, and APK packaging: This script does retrieve and use the upstream SPRIV tools.
cd build-android ./build_all.sh
Resulting validation layer binaries will be in build-android/libs. Test and demo APKs can be installed on production devices with:
./install_all.sh [-s <serial number>]
Note that there are no equivalent scripts on Windows yet, that work needs to be completed. The following per platform commands can be used for layer only builds:
Follow the setup steps for Linux or OSX above, then from your terminal:
cd build-android ./update_external_sources_android.sh --no-build ./android-generate.sh ndk-build -j4
Follow the setup steps for Windows above, then from Developer Command Prompt for VS2013:
cd build-android update_external_sources_android.bat android-generate.bat ndk-build
After making any changes to the repository you should perform some quick sanity tests, including the layer validation tests and the cube and smoke demos with validation enabled.
Use the following steps to build, install, and run the layer validation tests for Android:
cd build-android ./build_all.sh adb install -r bin/VulkanLayerValidationTests.apk adb shell am start com.example.VulkanLayerValidationTests/android.app.NativeActivity
Alternatively, you can use the test_APK script to install and run the layer validation tests:
test_APK.sh -s <serial number> -p <plaform name> -f <gtest_filter>
Use the following steps to build, install, and run Cube and Smoke for Android:
cd build-android ./build_all.sh adb install -r ../demos/android/cube/bin/cube.apk adb shell am start com.example.Cube/android.app.NativeActivity
To build, install, and run Cube with validation layers, first build layers using steps above, then run:
cd build-android ./build_all.sh adb install -r ../demos/android/cube-with-layers/bin/cube-with-layers.apk
adb shell am start com.example.CubeWithLayers/android.app.NativeActivity
adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -c android-intent.category.LAUNCH -n com.example.CubeWithLayers/android.app.NativeActivity --es args "--validate"
To build, install, and run the Smoke demo for Android, run the following, and any prompts that come back from the script:
./update_external_sources.sh --glslang cd demos/smoke/android export ANDROID_SDK_HOME=<path to Android/Sdk> export ANDROID_NDK_HOME=<path to Android/Sdk/ndk-bundle> ./build-and-install adb shell am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -c android-intent.category.LAUNCH -n com.example.Smoke/android.app.NativeActivity --es args "--validate"
Tested on OSX version 10.12.6
Setup Homebrew and components
Follow instructions on brew.sh to get Homebrew installed.
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
Ensure Homebrew is at the beginning of your PATH:
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
Add packages with the following (may need refinement)
brew install cmake python python3 git
Clone the Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers repository:
git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers.git
Change to the cloned directory (cd Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers) and run the script:
./update_external_sources.sh
This script downloads and builds the glslang and MoltenVK repositories.
This repository uses CMake to generate build or project files that are then used to build the repository. The CMake generators explicitly supported in this repository are:
This generator is the default generator, so all that is needed for a debug build is:
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..
make
To speed up the build on a multi-core machine, use the -j option for make to specify the number of cores to use for the build. For example:
make -j4
You can now run the demo applications from the command line:
open demos/cube.app open demos/cubepp.app open demos/smoketest.app open demos/vulkaninfo.app
Or you can locate them from Finder and launch them from there.
The applications you just built are “bundled applications”, but the executables are using the RPATH mechanism to locate runtime dependencies that are still in your build tree.
To see this, run this command from your build directory:
otool -l demos/cube.app/Contents/MacOS/cube
and note that the cube executable contains loader commands:
LC_LOAD_DYLIB to load libvulkan.1.dylib via an @rpathLC_RPATH that contains an absolute path to the build location of the Vulkan loaderThis makes the bundled application “non-transportable”, meaning that it won't run unless the Vulkan loader is on that specific absolute path. This is useful for debugging the loader or other components built in this repository, but not if you want to move the application to another machine or remove your build tree.
To address this problem, run:
make install
This step “cleans up” the RPATH to remove any external references and performs other bundle fix-ups. After running make install, re-run the otool command again and note:
LC_LOAD_DYLIB is now @executable_path/../MacOS/libvulkan.1.dylibLC_RPATH is no longer presentThe “bundle fix-up” operation also puts a copy of the Vulkan loader into the bundle, making the bundle completely self-contained and self-referencing.
Note that the “install” target has a very different meaning compared to the Linux “make install” target. The Linux “install” copies the targets to system directories. In MacOS, “install” means fixing up application bundles. In both cases, the “install” target operations clean up the RPATH.
There is also a non-bundled version of the vulkaninfo application that you can run from the command line:
demos/vulkaninfo
If you run this before you run “make install”, vulkaninfo‘s RPATH is already set to point to the Vulkan loader in the build tree, so it has no trouble finding it. But the loader will not find the MoltenVK driver and you’ll see a message about an incompatible driver. To remedy this:
VK_ICD_FILENAMES=../external/MoltenVK/Package/Latest/MoltenVK/macOS/MoltenVK_icd.json demos/vulkaninfo
If you run vulkaninfo after doing a “make install”, the RPATH in the vulkaninfo application got removed and the OS needs extra help to locate the Vulkan loader:
DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=loader VK_ICD_FILENAMES=../external/MoltenVK/Package/Latest/MoltenVK/macOS/MoltenVK_icd.json demos/vulkaninfo
To create and open an Xcode project:
mkdir build-xcode
cd build-xcode
cmake -GXcode ..
open VULKAN.xcodeproj
Within Xcode, you can select Debug or Release builds in the project's Build Settings. You can also select individual schemes for working with specific applications like cube.
The Qt Creator IDE can open a root CMakeList.txt as a project directly, and it provides tools within Creator to configure and generate Vulkan SDK build files for one to many targets concurrently. Alternatively, when invoking CMake, use the -G "Codeblocks - Ninja" option to generate Ninja build files to be used as project files for QtCreator
Note that installing the WDK breaks the MSVC vcvarsall.bat build scripts provided by MSVC, requiring that the LIB, INCLUDE, and PATHenv variables be set to the WDK paths by some other means
This script will default to building 64-bit and 32-bit versions of debug and release configurations, which can take a substantial amount of time. However, it supports the following options to select a particular build configuration which can reduce the time needed for repository set-up:
| Command Line Option | Function |
|---|---|
| --32 | Build 32-bit targets only |
| --64 | Build 64-bit targets only |
| --release | Perform release builds only |
| --debug | Perform debug builds only |
| --no-build | Sync without building targets |
| --no-sync | Skip repository sync step |
For example, to target a Windows 64-bit debug development configuration, invoke the batch file as follows:
update_external_sources.bat --64 --debug
Similarly, invoking the same configuration for Linux would be:
update_external_sources.sh --64 --debug
The glslang repository is required to build and run Loader and Validation Layer components. It is not a git sub-module of Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers but Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers is linked to a specific revision of glslang. This can be automatically cloned and built to predefined locations with the update_external_sources scripts. If a custom configuration is required, do the following steps:
clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang.git
checkout the correct version of the tree based on the contents of the glslang_revision file at the root of the Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers tree (do the same anytime that Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers is updated from remote)
git checkout < [path to Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers]\glslang_revision [in glslang repo]
git checkout `cat [path to Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers]\glslang_revision` [in glslang repo]
Configure the glslang source tree with CMake and build it with your IDE of choice
Enable the CUSTOM_GLSLANG_BIN_PATH and CUSTOM_SPIRV_TOOLS_BIN_PATH options in the Vulkan-LoaderAndValidationLayers CMake configuration and point the GLSLANG_BINARY_PATH and SPIRV_TOOLS_BINARY_PATH variables to the correct location
If building on Windows with MSVC, set DISABLE_BUILDTGT_DIR_DECORATION to On. If building on Windows, but without MSVC set DISABLE_BUILD_PATH_DECORATION to On