VulkanHub

VK_EXT_tooling_info

Other Extension Metadata

Last Modified Date

2018-11-05

Contributors
  • Rolando Caloca
  • Matthaeus Chajdas
  • Baldur Karlsson
  • Daniel Rakos

Description

When an error occurs during application development, a common question is "What tools are actually running right now?" This extension adds the ability to query that information directly from the Vulkan implementation.

Outdated versions of one tool might not play nicely with another, or perhaps a tool is not actually running when it should have been. Trying to figure that out can cause headaches as it is necessary to consult each known tool to figure out what is going on — in some cases the tool might not even be known.

Typically, the expectation is that developers will simply print out this information for visual inspection when an issue occurs, however a small amount of semantic information about what the tool is doing is provided to help identify it programmatically. For example, if the advertised limits or features of an implementation are unexpected, is there a tool active which modifies these limits? Or if an application is providing debug markers, but the implementation is not actually doing anything with that information, this can quickly point that out.

New Commands

New Structures

New Enums

New Bitmasks

New Enum Constants

  • VK_EXT_TOOLING_INFO_EXTENSION_NAME
  • VK_EXT_TOOLING_INFO_SPEC_VERSION
  • Extending VkStructureType:
    • VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_TOOL_PROPERTIES_EXT

If VK_EXT_debug_marker is supported:

If VK_EXT_debug_report is supported:

If VK_EXT_debug_utils is supported:

  • Extending VkToolPurposeFlagBits:
    • VK_TOOL_PURPOSE_DEBUG_MARKERS_BIT_EXT
    • VK_TOOL_PURPOSE_DEBUG_REPORTING_BIT_EXT

Promotion to Vulkan 1.3

Functionality in this extension is included in core Vulkan 1.3, with the EXT suffix omitted. The original type, enum, and command names are still available as aliases of the core functionality.

Examples

Printing Tool Information

uint32_t num_tools; VkPhysicalDeviceToolPropertiesEXT *pToolProperties; vkGetPhysicalDeviceToolPropertiesEXT(physicalDevice, &num_tools, NULL);

pToolProperties = (VkPhysicalDeviceToolPropertiesEXT*)malloc(sizeof(VkPhysicalDeviceToolPropertiesEXT) * num_tools);

vkGetPhysicalDeviceToolPropertiesEXT(physicalDevice, &num_tools, pToolProperties);

for (int i = 0; i < num_tools; ++i) { printf("%s:\n", pToolProperties[i].name); printf("Version:\n"); printf("%s:\n", pToolProperties[i].version); printf("Description:\n"); printf("\t%s\n", pToolProperties[i].description); printf("Purposes:\n"); printf("\t%s\n", VkToolPurposeFlagBitsEXT_to_string(pToolProperties[i].purposes)); if (strnlen_s(pToolProperties[i].layer,VK_MAX_EXTENSION_NAME_SIZE) > 0) { printf("Corresponding Layer:\n"); printf("\t%s\n", pToolProperties[i].layer); } }

Issues

1) Why is this information separate from the layer mechanism?

Some tooling may be built into a driver, or be part of the Vulkan loader etc. Tying this information directly to layers would have been awkward at best.

Version History

  • Revision 1, 2018-11-05 (Tobias Hector)
    • Initial draft