vulkan-renderer

A Vulkan graphics renderer for macOS, built with C++20 and MoltenVK. Following Brendan Galea's Vulkan Game Engine Tutorial series.

Features

• MoltenVK — Vulkan-to-Metal translation layer for native macOS support
• CMake build system — automatic dependency resolution for Vulkan, GLFW, and GLM via Homebrew
• Shader compilation pipeline — GLSL → SPIR-V at build time (supports both glslc and glslangValidator)
• Validation layers — enabled in debug builds with graceful fallback when unavailable
• CMake presets — Debug (validation on, symbols) and Release (validation off, optimized)

Prerequisites

• macOS with Apple Silicon or Intel
• Homebrew
• CMake 3.24+
• A C++20 compiler (Xcode Command Line Tools)

Quick Start

# Install all dependencies
chmod +x setup.sh && ./setup.sh

# Build (debug)
cmake --preset debug
cmake --build build/debug

# Run
./build/debug/vulkan_renderer

Project Structure

vulkan-renderer/
├── CMakeLists.txt            # Build configuration
├── CMakePresets.json         # Debug/Release presets
├── cmake/
│   └── CompileShaders.cmake  # GLSL → SPIR-V compilation module
├── shaders/
│   ├── triangle.vert         # Vertex shader
│   └── triangle.frag         # Fragment shader
├── src/
│   ├── main.cpp              # Entry point
│   ├── first_app.hpp/cpp     # Application class
│   └── lve_window.hpp/cpp    # GLFW window wrapper
└── setup.sh                  # One-time dependency installer

Dependencies

Installed automatically via setup.sh:

Package	Purpose
molten-vk	Vulkan → Metal translation
vulkan-headers	Vulkan C headers
vulkan-loader	libvulkan ICD loader
vulkan-tools	vulkaninfo, vkcube
vulkan-validationlayers	VK_LAYER_KHRONOS_validation
glfw	Windowing and input
glm	Math library (header-only)
glslang	glslangValidator shader compiler
shaderc	glslc shader compiler

Environment Variables

Required for MoltenVK and validation layers (setup.sh offers to set these):

export VULKAN_SDK="$(brew --prefix)/share/vulkan"
export VK_ICD_FILENAMES="$(brew --prefix)/share/vulkan/icd.d/MoltenVK_icd.json"
export VK_LAYER_PATH="$(brew --prefix)/share/vulkan/explicit_layer.d"

License

MIT