Minimal Vulkan app example

The goal of this project is to minimize exe size.

Ideas which contribute to reduced executable size:

Do not perform heap allocations. Use static buffers. Managing memory increases code size and encourages writing sloppy code. In many cases it is possible to write perfectly good programs without using heap allocations.
Do not free resources on exit. The OS and the Vulkan lib tidy up all resources anyway. (Some resources need to be freed to avoid running out of them, such as reallocated swapchain images during window resize, etc.)
Allocate structures and arrays in static store (data segment) when possible. Typically Vulkan structures take advantage of this approach, which avoids generating extra code for filling out these structures if they were on the stack.
Rearrange SPIR-V bytecode to make it more friendly to executable compressors. This increases the executable size in the first place, but the SPIR-V bytecode is laid out in such a way that the executable becomes even smaller after compression.
(Windows) Do not depend on MS C runtime. C library on Windows is linked statically into the executable and causes bloat.

Building from sources

On Windows, use e.g. MSYS2 or Cygwin to get GNU make. The Makefile still uses MSVC, so make sure you run vcvarsall.bat x64 (or x86) before entering MSYS2 environment.
Install Vulkan SDK.

Use GNU make to compile the sources.

Additional variables which can be passed to make as arguments:

debug=1 Enables debug build.
VULKAN_SDK=path Path to Vulkan SDK, in case it's not installed where compiler can find it. This is used for includes.
VULKAN_SDK_BIN=path Path to Vulkan SDK bin dir, where glslangValidator is. This is necessary if Vulkan SDK is unpacked in a directory and not fully installed in the system.
stdlib=1 (Windows-only) Enables linking against MSVCRT, required for GUI apps.

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 467 Commits
.github/workflows		.github/workflows
example		example
sculptor		sculptor
shaders		shaders
thirdparty		thirdparty
tools		tools
.gitignore		.gitignore
Info.plist		Info.plist
Makefile		Makefile
README.md		README.md
d_printf.h		d_printf.h
gui.cpp		gui.cpp
gui.h		gui.h
gui_config.cpp		gui_config.cpp
gui_imgui.h		gui_imgui.h
gui_linux.cpp		gui_linux.cpp
gui_macos.mm		gui_macos.mm
gui_windows.cpp		gui_windows.cpp
host_filler.cpp		host_filler.cpp
host_filler.h		host_filler.h
load_png.cpp		load_png.cpp
load_png.h		load_png.h
main_linux.cpp		main_linux.cpp
main_linux.h		main_linux.h
main_macos.h		main_macos.h
main_macos.mm		main_macos.mm
main_windows.cpp		main_windows.cpp
main_windows.h		main_windows.h
memory_heap.cpp		memory_heap.cpp
memory_heap.h		memory_heap.h
memory_heap_gui.cpp		memory_heap_gui.cpp
memory_heap_nogui.cpp		memory_heap_nogui.cpp
minivulkan.cpp		minivulkan.cpp
minivulkan.h		minivulkan.h
mstdc.cpp		mstdc.cpp
mstdc.h		mstdc.h
mstdc_windows.cpp		mstdc_windows.cpp
nogui.cpp		nogui.cpp
nogui_linux.cpp		nogui_linux.cpp
nogui_macos.mm		nogui_macos.mm
nogui_windows.cpp		nogui_windows.cpp
resource.cpp		resource.cpp
resource.h		resource.h
resource_gui.cpp		resource_gui.cpp
rng.cpp		rng.cpp
rng.h		rng.h
runtests		runtests
shaders.cpp		shaders.cpp
shaders.h		shaders.h
sound.cpp		sound.cpp
usage.h		usage.h
vecfloat.h		vecfloat.h
vecfloat_default.h		vecfloat_default.h
vecfloat_neon.h		vecfloat_neon.h
vecfloat_sse.h		vecfloat_sse.h
vmath.cpp		vmath.cpp
vmath.h		vmath.h
vmath_unit.cpp		vmath_unit.cpp
vulkan_extensions.h		vulkan_extensions.h
vulkan_functions.h		vulkan_functions.h