Google Gets DirectX Shader Compiler Working On Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Google Gets DirectX Shader Compiler Working On Linux

At the start of 2017 Microsoft open-sourced their new DirectX shader compiler and now thanks to the work of some Google engineers this shader compiler is working on Linux...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DXSC-Google-Linux

[GunpowaderGuy]

In other news , rust ( a subset ) gets a spir v compiler

[JeansenVaars]

Someone technical please explain this. Is this an OMG thing?

[starshipeleven]

It's also on MacOS.

I don't know enough of the graphics internals to comment, but if someone can translate what is written in this documentation page (in their source) in layman terms it would be great. https://github.com/google/DirectXSha.../DxcOnUnix.rst

oiaohm

[VikingGe]

Someone technical please explain this. Is this an OMG thing?

It's just a HLSL->SPIR-V compiler, which lets you use DirectX shaders with Vulkan with very little modification. Not sure if it's necessarly *better* than glslang's HLSL support, but if it works well enough, it should make it easier for people to target Vulkan natively, and getting it to run on Linux is obviously nice if you develop on Linux. One of the major issues with Vulkan adoption is probably that no one wants to maintain a GLSL and a HLSL version of their shaders.

[boxie]

Someone technical please explain this. Is this an OMG thing?

Having an official compiler? probably means that compatibility should be close to 100% all the time. Also - Having another MS project running natively under Linux is a good thing for everyone

In time it might mean that things like WINE have a second option for shaders in games - at which point Michael . would be able to benchmark them and let us know which is more performant!

[shmerl]

In time it might mean that things like WINE have a second option for shaders in games

Regular Wine is not compiling HLSL, it translating DXBC (DirectX bytecode), so I'm not sure how that would be helpful. It will be useful to those who are making source ports though.

[sarmad]

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, this will be mostly helpful for getting people who already use a cross platform engine (Unity, Unreal, etc) to more easily target Linux with a more guaranteed compatibility since this is now an official tool from MS.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[oiaohm]

It's also on MacOS.

I don't know enough of the graphics internals to comment, but if someone can translate what is written in this documentation page (in their source) in layman terms it would be great. https://github.com/google/DirectXSha.../DxcOnUnix.rst

oiaohm

Unfortunately I don't do enough with direct x to answer how badly limited that is. By what is disabled there will be some limitations. The fact they cannot run the proper test suite is a major problem at this stage as well.

[smitty3268]

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, this will be mostly helpful for getting people who already use a cross platform engine (Unity, Unreal, etc) to more easily target Linux with a more guaranteed compatibility since this is now an official tool from MS.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Pretty much. Although as i recall, the SPIR-V backend is mostly maintained by Google, so it may or may not be 100% complete and bug free. The front-end HLSL parser is the official MS one though.

I believe there are 2 major camps right now with ports, with some people using this tool (on windows, previously) and others using glslang, which is closer to the SPIR-V camp but may not support HLSL as fully as this tool does.