vulkan-triangle

Vulkan Triangle - Pure Go Integration Test

Full integration test for the Pure Go Vulkan backend. This test validates the entire rendering pipeline from window creation to triangle rendering.

What It Tests

This integration test validates:

1. Window Creation - Win32 API via syscall/purego
2. Vulkan Instance - Pure Go Vulkan initialization
3. Surface Creation - Platform-specific surface for Win32
4. Adapter Enumeration - Physical device detection
5. Device Creation - Logical device and queue
6. Surface Configuration - Swapchain setup
7. Shader Modules - SPIR-V shader loading
8. Pipeline Creation - Full render pipeline
9. Render Loop - Acquire → Render → Present cycle
10. Clean Shutdown - Resource cleanup

Test Output

The test should:

• Create an 800x600 window titled "Vulkan Triangle - Pure Go"
• Display a red triangle on a blue background
• Print initialization steps with OK/FAILED status
• Show FPS counter in console
• Run until window is closed

Architecture

Shaders

Pre-compiled SPIR-V shaders are embedded in shaders.go:

Vertex Shader (triangle.vert.spv):

• Hardcoded triangle positions (no vertex buffers)
• Uses gl_VertexIndex to select vertex

Fragment Shader (triangle.frag.spv):

• Outputs solid red color (1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0)

Render Pipeline

Window (Win32) → Surface (VK_KHR_win32_surface)
    → Swapchain (BGRA8Unorm, Fifo)
    → RenderPass (Blue clear color)
    → Pipeline (Vertex + Fragment shaders)
    → Draw (3 vertices, triangle list)
    → Present

No CGO Required

All Vulkan calls use syscall.SyscallN via hal/vulkan/vk package. No C compiler needed.

Building

# Windows only (for now)
cd cmd/vulkan-triangle
GOROOT="/c/Program Files/Go" go build

Running

# Requires:
# - Windows 10+
# - Vulkan driver installed
# - vulkan-1.dll in PATH (usually in System32)

./vulkan-triangle.exe

Expected Output

=== Vulkan Triangle Integration Test ===

1. Creating window... OK
2. Creating Vulkan backend... OK
3. Creating Vulkan instance... OK
4. Creating surface... OK
5. Enumerating adapters... OK (found 1)
   - Adapter 0: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (NVIDIA Vulkan 1.3.XXX)
6. Opening device... OK
7. Configuring surface... OK
8. Creating shader modules... OK
9. Creating pipeline layout... OK
10. Creating render pipeline... OK

=== Starting Render Loop ===
Press ESC or close window to exit

Rendered 60 frames (60.0 FPS)
Rendered 120 frames (60.0 FPS)
...

=== Test Complete ===
Total frames: 360
Average FPS: 60.0

Troubleshooting

Build Errors

Error: cannot find package "github.com/gogpu/wgpu/hal/vulkan"

• Make sure you're in the wgpu repository
• Run go mod tidy

Runtime Errors

Error: vulkan-1.dll not found

• Install Vulkan SDK or GPU driver with Vulkan support
• Add Vulkan SDK bin directory to PATH

Error: vkCreateInstance failed

• GPU driver may not support Vulkan 1.2+
• Try removing types.InstanceFlagsDebug from instance descriptor

Error: no adapters found

• GPU driver doesn't support the surface type
• Check GPU supports Vulkan

Window doesn't appear

• Check console for error messages
• Try running as administrator

Black window / No triangle

• Shaders may not be loading correctly
• Pipeline creation may have failed (check console)
• Check GPU supports BGRA8Unorm format

Implementation Status

• Window creation (Windows)
• Vulkan initialization
• Surface creation
• Adapter enumeration
• Device creation
• Swapchain configuration
• Shader modules (SPIR-V)
• Pipeline creation
• Render pass
• Command encoding
• Presentation
• Linux support (VK_KHR_xlib_surface)
• macOS support (MoltenVK)

Files

Design Notes

This test follows the minimal WebGPU workflow:

1. Instance → Surface → Adapter → Device
2. Configure surface with format and present mode
3. Create shaders → Create pipeline
4. Loop: Acquire → Encode → Submit → Present

Key differences from WebGPU:

• Vulkan requires explicit swapchain management
• Memory allocation is explicit (using hal/vulkan/memory allocator)
• No automatic resource tracking (manual Destroy calls)

Future Enhancements

• Vertex buffers test (not hardcoded positions)
• Index buffers test
• Uniform buffers test
• Texture sampling test
• Depth testing test
• Multiple render targets
• Compute shader test

Related Tests

• cmd/vk-test - Minimal Vulkan device test (no rendering)
• cmd/gles-test - OpenGL ES backend test

Platform: Windows 10+ (64-bit) Go Version: 1.25+ Vulkan Version: 1.2+