Getting a copy of Vcc #

There currently are no release builds available for Vcc, however it can be compiled as part of Shady which is freely available on GitHub. The following dependencies are required:

• A C11 compliant compiler
• CMake 3.13 or later
• json-c
• SPIRV-Headers
• Vulkan-Headers are optional but are used to build some components of shady such as tests
• A copy of LLVM that includes the CMakeConfig.cmake files, so that Vcc can link against it
  • Multiple LLVM versions are supported because we use LLVM-C, which has a more stable interface. Versions 14 to 17 have been tested so far.

Additionally, a copy of clang on your path is required at runtime for vcc to operate. This copy may be a different version than the LLVM you linked Vcc against, however might cause issues due to how the LLVM IR evolves over time.

Using Vcc #

Vcc is used much like GCC or Clang is. In fact, most arguments are just forwarded to Clang! Using vcc --help one can a list of vcc specific arguments and flags. Vcc can produce SPIR-V binary files, and also has experimental support for GLSL and ISPC output. These SPIR-V files can then be ingested by your application as normal.

Language extensions and <shady.h> #

See C/C++ Language Extensions.

Required Vulkan version and capabilities #

Vcc currently requires Vulkan 1.1 and support for VK_KHR_buffer_device_address. It also currently requires support for Int8, Int16 and Int64 and subgroup ballots. These features are ubiquitous on desktop-class hardware and even many phones nowadays.

Some features are or will be made optional, with some corresponding degradations on the capabilities of the compiler. We are still working on organizing the compiler flags and we will be writing up a more comprehensive support matrix later.

Supported drivers #

The following drivers and hardware have been tested with Shady: