Feature Suggestion: More Debugging and Compiling Information on Shader Compilation

Love to know people's thoughts on trying to include more debugging information for shaders?

I've recently been writing more glsl in openFrameworks and I've been finding it frustrating that there's not more information on if shaders compile correctly. Maybe I'm missing something that's already in oF but I found this old forum post expressing a similar sentiment: https://forum.openframeworks.cc/t/debugging-of-glsl-code-any-suggestions/12318.

My suggestion would be to add a precompile step for projects that include shader files. This step would run glslangValidator (found in https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang) and provide the results in the output. It may not be perfect but I think it would improve the process. Of course if someone knows a more powerful tool to validate glsl code then that would be awesome.

If people think this would be a good addition. I would be willing to work on this project but I would likely need support. I could test on windows and linux but I don't currently have an osx machine. I would also likely need someone more familiar with the code base to provide guidance and/or answer questions. That being said if someone else wants to take on this task that would be awesome too.

Start by locating the project's shader compilation or project precompile entry point and reviewing how shader files are currently handled. Evaluate where glslangValidator could run and how its results would be reported across platforms; done means shader projects receive useful compilation diagnostics, with behavior defined for supported systems.