gfx-rs

A lightweight buffer, shader and render queue manager for Rust.

Getting Started

For the initial build of both gfx-rs and all its dependencies, use this incantation:

make init

Afterwards, you can use these targets:

make                    # build libraries, examples, and documentation
make lib                # build libraries only
make examples           # build the examples
make test               # build and run the unit tests
make doc                # generate documentation
make clean              # clean up everything (except for the dependencies)

make submodule-update   # initialise and update submodules
make deps               # build the dependencies
make clean-deps         # clean up the dependencies

The Problem

• Graphics APIs are difficult and diverse in nature. We've seen Mantle and Metal popping out of nowhere. Even for OpenGL there are different profiles that may need to be supported.
• Communicating with the driver is considered expensive, thus feeding it should be done in parallel with the user code.
• Graphics programming is dangerous. Using Rust allows building a safer abstraction without run-time overhead.

Design Goals

• Safe but non-limiting higher level interface
• Simple, lightweight implementation
• Low performance overhead
• Graphics API agnostic (OpenGL/Direct3D/Metal)
• Maths library agnostic
• Composable (a library, not a framework)
• Compatible with Rust's task-based concurrency model
• Clear documentation with examples

Possible Solutions

• Verify compatibility of the shader inputs with user-provided data.
• Use Rust procedural macros to generate the code for querying and uploading of shader parameters.
• Make use of 'draw call bucketing'. See research.md for more information.
• Leave scene and model management up to the client, and focus instead on buffers and shaders.
• Provide structural data types (as opposed to nominal ones) in order to make interfacing with other maths libraries easier. For example:

pub type Vertex4<T> = [T,..4];
pub type Matrix4x3<T> = [[T,..3],..4];

Note

gfx-rs is still in the early stages of development. Help is most appreciated.

If you are interested in helping out, you can contact the developers on Gitter. See contrib.md for contant information and contribution guidelines.