SHINJI is a CMake addon that helps you managing GLSL shaders validation, compilation and deployment.

Because of its architecture, SHINJI only acts in project configuration time.

As mentioned SHINJI divides the shader processing in 3 parts:

• Validation: validates GLSL shaders using the Vulkan SDK tool glslanValidator.
• Compilation: offers you the possibility to compile GLSL shaders to SPIR-V using the Vulkan SDK tool glslc.
• Deployment: I'm aware "deployment" isn't a very used word in this area: for "deployment" I mean the process of making the shaders available to the built application. In a common scenario this translates to copying the shaders from the source to the build folder. Other than this, SHINJI can embed shaders in the application binary (really useful for libraries!).

The following are the minimum requirements needed to run SHINJI:

• CMake 3.19
• C++17
• Python3
• Vulkan SDK

You have to describe how SHINJI will treat your shaders through a configuration file: shinji.json.

{
    "generated_file": "src/generated/shinji.hpp",
    "embed": {
         "shaders": [
            "shaders/test_txt.vert",
            {                                          
                "type": "glslc",
                "name": "shaders/test_spv.vert.spv",
                "input": "shaders/test_spv.vert",
                "glslc_options": "--target-env=opengl"
            }
        ]
    }
}

The code above describes two shaders: shaders/test_txt.vert (textual) and shaders/test_spv.vert.spv (compiled from shaders/test_spv.vert) that needs to be embedded in the application.

The field generated_file is required and specify an auto-generated file holding, in this case, the shaders and shader loading functions.

• NOTE: shinji.json must always lay in the project root folder (where CMakeLists.txt is).
• NOTE: relative paths are treated relative to CMakeLists.txt.

In order to load SHINJI from CMakeLists.txt:

# todo download shinji package
include(${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/shinji.cmake)

add_executable(test_app ...)  
  
shinji_load(test_app)

To retrieve the shader source in code you can use the following functions:

#include "src/generated/shinji.hpp" // Or whatever you've wrote in `shinji.json`.

{
    auto [src, src_len] = shinji::load_shader_from_bundle("shaders/test_txt.vert");
    // Use OpenGL/Vulkan or whatever to load the shader...
}

{
    auto [src, src_len] = shinji::load_shader_from_bundle("shaders/test_spv.vert.spv");
    // ...
}