libsdl-org
[Question] Is there a potential for Slang shaders to be supported in SLD_gpu?
I'll preface this with I am not a compiler engineer, so I don't know if this is acheivable in a reasonable amount of time/is even possible.
I have only seen one mention of Slang in another thread and it wasn't directly responded to so I figured I would make a dedicated question post about it. Slang according to the developers is "a language for real-time graphics programming that extends HLSL with new capabilities for modular, extensible, and high-performance programming." It specifies that one of it's big features is the fact that it can be transpiled to other shading languages like HLSL or GLSL, or even compiled directly to SPIR-V or DXIL for example.
I know there is talk of an SDL bytecode, so instead of also having to maintain an additional shader language has it been considered maybe collaborating with the Slang devs to make Slang a first class shader language for SDL? From a lay persons perspective at least they both have similar goals of being high performance, cross platform and most importantly just more enjoyable to write.
This isn't on my TODO list at the moment, but I am very interested in the final result not being tied to one programming language, so it could definitely be worth exploring!
I'll just add that I'm using Slang with SDL3 GPU right now and it's great, other than slangc being a bit unstable as of yet. Since SDL3 accepts SPIRV/DXIL/Metallib, and slangc can generate those from source including debug info / source mapping, it's a great fit already.
Looking forward to seeing where the SDL shader language goes, but I'm also happy the SDL3 GPU API is constructed in such a way to allow any cross-compiling toolchain to be used right off the bat!
