2.0.0

LavaCake 2.0.0

LavaCake 2.0 is a complete rewrite of the library. The entire API surface is new — nothing from 1.x carries over directly.

Core architecture

• Header-only. Drop in via CMake find_package or FetchContent, no separate compilation step.
• Built on vulkan.hpp. All handles and enums are the vulkan.hpp types; raw Vk* handles are not exposed.
• Vulkan 1.3 dynamic rendering is mandatory — there are no render passes anywhere in the API.
• VMA is the sole allocator for buffers and images. A thin flag wrapper is provided for allocation tuning.

Device creation

• Four factory functions cover the common cases: createBasicDevice, createWindowedDevice, createAdvancedDevice, createHeadlessDevice.
• A fluent Device::Builder is available for full control: queue counts, validation layers, instance/device extensions, 46 individual Vulkan 1.0 feature toggles, and a generic addFeature<T>() for any feature struct in the chain.

Window-manager agnostic

• Surface creation is driven by a SurfaceConfig struct containing an extension list and a createSurface callback. The library has no direct dependency on any windowing library.
• Drop-in helpers are provided for GLFW (GLFWSupport.hpp) and SDL2 (SDL2Support.hpp). Both automatically populate the preferred extent for Wayland compatibility.

Swapchain resizing

• Device::resizeSwapchain() destroys and recreates the swapchain in one call, passing the old swapchain to the driver for reuse.
• Accepts an optional vk::Extent2D for platforms (Wayland) where currentExtent is UINT32_MAX. Falls back to the extent captured at device creation time if none is supplied.

Pipelines and shaders

• Runtime GLSL-to-SPIR-V compilation via shaderc. Pre-compiled SPIR-V byte code is also accepted.
• GraphicsPipeline::Builder and ComputePipeline::Builder cover the full pipeline state with a fluent API.
• Bindless rendering is fully supported: descriptor indexing is enabled by default in the factory functions.

Descriptors

• DescriptorSetLayout::Builder, DescriptorPool, and DescriptorSetUpdater provide type-safe descriptor management without raw Vulkan calls.

ImGui

• ImGuiRenderer renders ImGui draw lists directly into any image view. Vertex and fragment shaders are embedded as SPIR-V.

Examples — 13 total

• Basic: clear screen, colored triangle (with resize handling), uniform buffer, vertex buffer, indexed quad, three bindless variants, rotating cube.
• Advanced: shadow mapping, multiple lights with bindless shadow arrays.
• Compute: headless vector addition.
• ImGui: full demo overlay.

Build and install

• CMake 3.13+, C++20.
• cmake --install produces a relocatable package with headers, shaderc, and CMake config files. macOS, Linux, and Windows (untested) are supported.