hexops/mach-gpu

The WebGPU interface for Zig - providing a truly cross-platform graphics API for Zig (desktop, mobile, and web) with unified low-level graphics & compute backed by Vulkan, Metal, D3D12, and OpenGL (as a best-effort fallback.)

Features

• Desktop, Steam Deck, (soon) web, and (future) mobile support.
• A modern graphics API similar to Metal, Vulkan, and DirectX 12.
• Cross-platform shading language
• Compute shaders
• Seamless cross-compilation & zero-fuss installation, as with all Mach libraries.

Documentation

machengine.org/pkg/mach-gpu

Join the community

Join the Mach community on Discord to discuss this project, ask questions, get help, etc.

Issues

Issues are tracked in the main Mach repository.

WebGPU version

Dawn's webgpu.h is the authoritative source for our API. You can find the current version we use here.

Development rules

The rules for translating webgpu.h are as follows:

• WGPUBuffer -> gpu.Buffer:
  • Opaque pointers like these become a pub const Buffer = opaque {_} to ensure they are still pointers compatible with the C ABI, while still allowing us to declare methods on them.
  • As a result, a nullable Buffer is represented simply as ?*Buffer, and any function that would normally take WGPUBuffer now takes *Buffer as a parameter.
• WGPUBufferBindingType -> gpu.Buffer.BindingType (purely because it's prefix matches an opaque pointer type, it thus goes into the Buffer opaque type.)
• Reserved Zig keywords are translated as follows:
  • error -> err
  • type -> typ
  • opaque -> opaq
• Constant names map using a few simple rules, but it's easiest to describe them with some concrete examples:
  • RG11B10Ufloat -> rg11_b10_ufloat
  • Depth24PlusStencil8 -> depth24_plus_stencil8
  • BC5RGUnorm -> bc5_rg_unorm
  • BC6HRGBUfloat -> bc6_hrgb_ufloat
  • ASTC4x4UnormSrgb -> astc4x4_unorm_srgb
  • maxTextureDimension3D -> max_texture_dimension_3d
• Sometimes an enum will begin with numbers, e.g. WGPUTextureViewDimension_2DArray. In this case, we add a prefix so instead of the enum field being 2d_array it is dimension_2d_array (an enum field name must not start with a number in Zig.)
• Dawn extension types WGPUDawnFoobar are placed under gpu.dawn.Foobar
• Regarding "undefined" terminology:
  • In Zig, undefined usually means undefined memory, undefined behavior, etc.
  • In WebGPU, undefined commonly refers to JS-style undefined: an optional value that was not specified