1Also see the Khronos landing page for glslang as a reference front end:
2
3https://www.khronos.org/opengles/sdk/tools/Reference-Compiler/
4
5The above page includes where to get binaries, and is kept up to date
6regarding the feature level of glslang.
7
8glslang
9=======
10
11[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/KhronosGroup/glslang.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/KhronosGroup/glslang)
12[![Build status](https://ci.appveyor.com/api/projects/status/q6fi9cb0qnhkla68/branch/master?svg=true)](https://ci.appveyor.com/project/Khronoswebmaster/glslang/branch/master)
13
14An OpenGL and OpenGL ES shader front end and validator.
15
16There are several components:
17
181. A GLSL/ESSL front-end for reference validation and translation of GLSL/ESSL into an AST.
19
202. An HLSL front-end for translation of a broad generic HLL into the AST. See [issue 362](https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang/issues/362) and [issue 701](https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang/issues/701) for current status.
21
223. A SPIR-V back end for translating the AST to SPIR-V.
23
244. A standalone wrapper, `glslangValidator`, that can be used as a command-line tool for the above.
25
26How to add a feature protected by a version/extension/stage/profile:  See the
27comment in `glslang/MachineIndependent/Versions.cpp`.
28
29Tasks waiting to be done are documented as GitHub issues.
30
31Execution of Standalone Wrapper
32-------------------------------
33
34To use the standalone binary form, execute `glslangValidator`, and it will print
35a usage statement.  Basic operation is to give it a file containing a shader,
36and it will print out warnings/errors and optionally an AST.
37
38The applied stage-specific rules are based on the file extension:
39* `.vert` for a vertex shader
40* `.tesc` for a tessellation control shader
41* `.tese` for a tessellation evaluation shader
42* `.geom` for a geometry shader
43* `.frag` for a fragment shader
44* `.comp` for a compute shader
45
46There is also a non-shader extension
47* `.conf` for a configuration file of limits, see usage statement for example
48
49Building
50--------
51
52Instead of building manually, you can also download the binaries for your
53platform directly from the [master-tot release][master-tot-release] on GitHub.
54Those binaries are automatically uploaded by the buildbots after successful
55testing and they always reflect the current top of the tree of the master
56branch.
57
58### Dependencies
59
60* A C++11 compiler.
61  (For MSVS: 2015 is recommended, 2013 is fully supported/tested, and 2010 support is attempted, but not tested.)
62* [CMake][cmake]: for generating compilation targets.
63* make: _Linux_, ninja is an alternative, if configured.
64* [Python 2.7][python]: for executing SPIRV-Tools scripts. (Optional if not using SPIRV-Tools.)
65* [bison][bison]: _optional_, but needed when changing the grammar (glslang.y).
66* [googletest][googletest]: _optional_, but should use if making any changes to glslang.
67
68### Build steps
69
70The following steps assume a Bash shell. On Windows, that could be the Git Bash
71shell or some other shell of your choosing.
72
73#### 1) Check-Out this project
74
75```bash
76cd <parent of where you want glslang to be>
77git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang.git
78```
79
80#### 2) Check-Out External Projects
81
82```bash
83cd <the directory glslang was cloned to, "External" will be a subdirectory>
84git clone https://github.com/google/googletest.git External/googletest
85```
86
87If you want to use googletest with Visual Studio 2013, you also need to check out an older version:
88
89```bash
90# to use googletest with Visual Studio 2013
91cd External/googletest
92git checkout 440527a61e1c91188195f7de212c63c77e8f0a45
93cd ../..
94```
95
96If you wish to assure that SPIR-V generated from HLSL is legal for Vulkan,
97or wish to invoke -Os to reduce SPIR-V size from HLSL or GLSL, install
98spirv-tools with this:
99
100```bash
101./update_glslang_sources.py
102```
103
104#### 3) Configure
105
106Assume the source directory is `$SOURCE_DIR` and the build directory is
107`$BUILD_DIR`. First ensure the build directory exists, then navigate to it:
108
109```bash
110mkdir -p $BUILD_DIR
111cd $BUILD_DIR
112```
113
114For building on Linux:
115
116```bash
117cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$(pwd)/install" $SOURCE_DIR
118# "Release" (for CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE) could also be "Debug" or "RelWithDebInfo"
119```
120
121For building on Windows:
122
123```bash
124cmake $SOURCE_DIR -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$(pwd)/install"
125# The CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX part is for testing (explained later).
126```
127
128The CMake GUI also works for Windows (version 3.4.1 tested).
129
130Also, consider using `git config --global core.fileMode false` (or with `--local`) on Windows
131to prevent the addition of execution permission on files.
132
133#### 4) Build and Install
134
135```bash
136# for Linux:
137make -j4 install
138
139# for Windows:
140cmake --build . --config Release --target install
141# "Release" (for --config) could also be "Debug", "MinSizeRel", or "RelWithDebInfo"
142```
143
144If using MSVC, after running CMake to configure, use the
145Configuration Manager to check the `INSTALL` project.
146
147### If you need to change the GLSL grammar
148
149The grammar in `glslang/MachineIndependent/glslang.y` has to be recompiled with
150bison if it changes, the output files are committed to the repo to avoid every
151developer needing to have bison configured to compile the project when grammar
152changes are quite infrequent. For windows you can get binaries from
153[GnuWin32][bison-gnu-win32].
154
155The command to rebuild is:
156
157```bash
158bison --defines=MachineIndependent/glslang_tab.cpp.h
159      -t MachineIndependent/glslang.y
160      -o MachineIndependent/glslang_tab.cpp
161```
162
163The above command is also available in the bash script at
164`glslang/updateGrammar`.
165
166Testing
167-------
168
169Right now, there are two test harnesses existing in glslang: one is [Google
170Test](gtests/), one is the [`runtests` script](Test/runtests). The former
171runs unit tests and single-shader single-threaded integration tests, while
172the latter runs multiple-shader linking tests and multi-threaded tests.
173
174### Running tests
175
176The [`runtests` script](Test/runtests) requires compiled binaries to be
177installed into `$BUILD_DIR/install`. Please make sure you have supplied the
178correct configuration to CMake (using `-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX`) when building;
179otherwise, you may want to modify the path in the `runtests` script.
180
181Running Google Test-backed tests:
182
183```bash
184cd $BUILD_DIR
185
186# for Linux:
187ctest
188
189# for Windows:
190ctest -C {Debug|Release|RelWithDebInfo|MinSizeRel}
191
192# or, run the test binary directly
193# (which gives more fine-grained control like filtering):
194<dir-to-glslangtests-in-build-dir>/glslangtests
195```
196
197Running `runtests` script-backed tests:
198
199```bash
200cd $SOURCE_DIR/Test && ./runtests
201```
202
203### Contributing tests
204
205Test results should always be included with a pull request that modifies
206functionality.
207
208If you are writing unit tests, please use the Google Test framework and
209place the tests under the `gtests/` directory.
210
211Integration tests are placed in the `Test/` directory. It contains test input
212and a subdirectory `baseResults/` that contains the expected results of the
213tests.  Both the tests and `baseResults/` are under source-code control.
214
215Google Test runs those integration tests by reading the test input, compiling
216them, and then compare against the expected results in `baseResults/`. The
217integration tests to run via Google Test is registered in various
218`gtests/*.FromFile.cpp` source files. `glslangtests` provides a command-line
219option `--update-mode`, which, if supplied, will overwrite the golden files
220under the `baseResults/` directory with real output from that invocation.
221For more information, please check `gtests/` directory's
222[README](gtests/README.md).
223
224For the `runtests` script, it will generate current results in the
225`localResults/` directory and `diff` them against the `baseResults/`.
226When you want to update the tracked test results, they need to be
227copied from `localResults/` to `baseResults/`.  This can be done by
228the `bump` shell script.
229
230You can add your own private list of tests, not tracked publicly, by using
231`localtestlist` to list non-tracked tests.  This is automatically read
232by `runtests` and included in the `diff` and `bump` process.
233
234Programmatic Interfaces
235-----------------------
236
237Another piece of software can programmatically translate shaders to an AST
238using one of two different interfaces:
239* A new C++ class-oriented interface, or
240* The original C functional interface
241
242The `main()` in `StandAlone/StandAlone.cpp` shows examples using both styles.
243
244### C++ Class Interface (new, preferred)
245
246This interface is in roughly the last 1/3 of `ShaderLang.h`.  It is in the
247glslang namespace and contains the following.
248
249```cxx
250const char* GetEsslVersionString();
251const char* GetGlslVersionString();
252bool InitializeProcess();
253void FinalizeProcess();
254
255class TShader
256    setStrings(...);
257    setEnvInput(EShSourceHlsl or EShSourceGlsl, stage,  EShClientVulkan or EShClientOpenGL, 100);
258    setEnvClient(EShClientVulkan or EShClientOpenGL, EShTargetVulkan_1_0 or EShTargetVulkan_1_1 or EShTargetOpenGL_450);
259    setEnvTarget(EShTargetSpv, EShTargetSpv_1_0 or EShTargetSpv_1_3);
260    bool parse(...);
261    const char* getInfoLog();
262
263class TProgram
264    void addShader(...);
265    bool link(...);
266    const char* getInfoLog();
267    Reflection queries
268```
269
270See `ShaderLang.h` and the usage of it in `StandAlone/StandAlone.cpp` for more
271details.
272
273### C Functional Interface (orignal)
274
275This interface is in roughly the first 2/3 of `ShaderLang.h`, and referred to
276as the `Sh*()` interface, as all the entry points start `Sh`.
277
278The `Sh*()` interface takes a "compiler" call-back object, which it calls after
279building call back that is passed the AST and can then execute a backend on it.
280
281The following is a simplified resulting run-time call stack:
282
283```c
284ShCompile(shader, compiler) -> compiler(AST) -> <back end>
285```
286
287In practice, `ShCompile()` takes shader strings, default version, and
288warning/error and other options for controlling compilation.
289
290Basic Internal Operation
291------------------------
292
293* Initial lexical analysis is done by the preprocessor in
294  `MachineIndependent/Preprocessor`, and then refined by a GLSL scanner
295  in `MachineIndependent/Scan.cpp`.  There is currently no use of flex.
296
297* Code is parsed using bison on `MachineIndependent/glslang.y` with the
298  aid of a symbol table and an AST.  The symbol table is not passed on to
299  the back-end; the intermediate representation stands on its own.
300  The tree is built by the grammar productions, many of which are
301  offloaded into `ParseHelper.cpp`, and by `Intermediate.cpp`.
302
303* The intermediate representation is very high-level, and represented
304  as an in-memory tree.   This serves to lose no information from the
305  original program, and to have efficient transfer of the result from
306  parsing to the back-end.  In the AST, constants are propogated and
307  folded, and a very small amount of dead code is eliminated.
308
309  To aid linking and reflection, the last top-level branch in the AST
310  lists all global symbols.
311
312* The primary algorithm of the back-end compiler is to traverse the
313  tree (high-level intermediate representation), and create an internal
314  object code representation.  There is an example of how to do this
315  in `MachineIndependent/intermOut.cpp`.
316
317* Reduction of the tree to a linear byte-code style low-level intermediate
318  representation is likely a good way to generate fully optimized code.
319
320* There is currently some dead old-style linker-type code still lying around.
321
322* Memory pool: parsing uses types derived from C++ `std` types, using a
323  custom allocator that puts them in a memory pool.  This makes allocation
324  of individual container/contents just few cycles and deallocation free.
325  This pool is popped after the AST is made and processed.
326
327  The use is simple: if you are going to call `new`, there are three cases:
328
329  - the object comes from the pool (its base class has the macro
330    `POOL_ALLOCATOR_NEW_DELETE` in it) and you do not have to call `delete`
331
332  - it is a `TString`, in which case call `NewPoolTString()`, which gets
333    it from the pool, and there is no corresponding `delete`
334
335  - the object does not come from the pool, and you have to do normal
336    C++ memory management of what you `new`
337
338
339[cmake]: https://cmake.org/
340[python]: https://www.python.org/
341[bison]: https://www.gnu.org/software/bison/
342[googletest]: https://github.com/google/googletest
343[bison-gnu-win32]: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/bison.htm
344[master-tot-release]: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang/releases/tag/master-tot
345