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<title>slang.git/source/slang/parameter-binding.h, branch master</title>
<subtitle>Making it easier to work with shaders</subtitle>
<id>https://git.yummers.dev/slang.git/atom?h=master</id>
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<updated>2019-05-31T21:20:37+00:00</updated>
<entry>
<title>Use slang- prefix on slang compiler and core source (#973)</title>
<updated>2019-05-31T21:20:37+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>jsmall-nvidia</name>
<email>jsmall@nvidia.com</email>
</author>
<published>2019-05-31T21:20:37+00:00</published>
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<id>urn:sha1:6cbc3929a54d37bd23cb5efa8e3320ba02f78b2f</id>
<content type='text'>
* Prefixing source files in source/slang with slang-

* Prefix source in source/slang with slang- prefix.

* Rename core source files with slang- prefix.

* Update project files.

* Fix problems from automatic merge.
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Split front- and back-ends (#846)</title>
<updated>2019-02-15T17:08:19+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Tim Foley</name>
<email>tfoleyNV@users.noreply.github.com</email>
</author>
<published>2019-02-15T17:08:19+00:00</published>
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<id>urn:sha1:a3fd4e2bc40cfc77db953b14744c30e7a18e7c1d</id>
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* Split front- and back-ends

This change is a major refactor of several of the types that provide the behind-the-scenes implementation of the public C API.
The goal of this refactor is primarily to allow for future API services that let the user operate both the front- and back-ends of the compiler in a more complex fashion.
For example, as user should be able to compile a bunch of source code into modules, look up types, functions, etc. in those modules, specialize generic types/functions to the types they've looked up, and then finally request target code to be gernerated for specialized entry points.
The back-end code generation they trigger should re-use the front-end compilation work (parsing, semantic checking, IR generation) that was already performed.

The most visible change is that `CompileRequest` has been split up into several smaller types that take responsibility for parts of what it did:

* The `Linkage` type owns the storage for `import`ed modules, and well as the `TargetRequest`s that represent code-generation targets. The intention is that an application could use a single `Linkage` for the duration of its runtime (so long as it was okay with the memory usage), so that each `import`ed module only gets loaded once. For now, this type needs to manage the search paths, file system, and source manager, because of its responsibility for loading files.

* A `FrontEndCompileRequest` owns the stuff related to parsing, semantic checking, and initial IR generation. This most notably includes the `TranslationUnitRequest`s and the `FrontEndEntryPointRequest`s (which used to be just `EntryPointRequest`s). It's main job is to produce AST and IR modules for each translation unit, and to find and validate the entry points. The front-end request does *not* interact with generic arguments for global or entry-point generic parameters.

* The main output of both `import` operations and front-end translation units is the `Module` type, which is just a simple container for both the AST module (to service the reflection/layout APIs, and also for semantic checking of code that `import`s the module) and the IR module (for linking and code generation). This type captures the commonalities between the old `LoadedModule` (which is now just an alias for `Module`) and `TranslationUnitRequest` (which now owns a `Module`).

* The secondary output of front-end compilation is a `Program`, which comprises a list of referenced `Module`s and validated `EntryPoint`s that will be used together. Layout and code generation both need a `Program` to tell them what modules and entry points will be used together (we don't want to just code-gen everythin that has ever been loaded into the linakge). The `Program`s created by the front-end do not include generic arguments, so they may provide incomplete layout information and/or be unsuitable for code generation.

* A `BackEndCompileRequest` owns stuff related to turning a `Program` into output kernels for the targets of a `Linkage`. Most of the data it owns beyond the `Program` to be compiled is minor, so this is a good candidate for demotion from a heap-allocated object to just a `struct` of options that gets passed around.

* The `CompileRequestBase` type is an attempt to wrap up the common functionality of both front-end and back-end compile requests. Most of it is just exposing the availability of a linkage and `DiagnosticSink`, so this type is a good candidate for subsequent removal. The main interesting thing it has is the flags related to dumping and validation of IR, so there is probably a good refactoring still to be made around deciding how options should be handled going forward.

* Behind the scenes, the `Program` type is set up to handle some level of on-line compilation and layout work. The `Program` knows the `Linkage` it belongs to, and allows for a `TargetProgram` to be looked up based on a specific `TargetRequest`. A `TargetProgram` then allows layout information and compiled kernel code to be asked for on-demand, in order to support eventual "live" compilation scenarios.

* The `EndToEndCompileRequest` type is a composition/coordination type that replaces the old `CompileRequest` in a way that uses the services of the various other types. It owns a few pieces of state that only make sense in the context of an end-to-end compile (e.g., there is really no way to "pass through" code when the front- and back-ends are run separately) or a command-line compile (everything to do with specifying output paths for files is really just for the benefit of `slangc`, and might even be moved there over time).

* One important detail is that the `EndToEndCompilRequest` owns all of the string-based generic arguments for both global and entry-point generic parameters. The logic in `check.cpp` for dealing with those arguments has been heavily refactored to separate out the parsings steps that are specific to end-to-end compilation with string-based type arguments, and the semantic checking  steps that result in a specialized `Program` (which can be exposed through new APIs that aren't tied to end-to-end compilation).

It is perhaps not surprising that this change had a lot of consequences, so I'll briefly run over some of the main categories of changes required:

* I changed the way that global generic arguments are passed via API (use `spSetGlobalGenericArgs` instead of the generic arguments for `spAddEntryPointEx`, which are not just for entry-point generics), which has been a change that we've needed for a long time. This is technically a breaking API change, although we should have very few client applications that care about it.

* A bunch of places that used to take "big" objects like `CompileRequest` now just take the sub-pieces they care about (e.g., a function might have only needed a `Linkage` and a `DiagnosticSink`). This makes many subroutines or "context" struct types more generally useful, at the cost of taking more parameters.

* In a few cases the conceptually clean separation of the layers breaks down (often for edge-case or compatibility features), and so we may pass along additional objects that are allowed to be null, but are used when present. A big example of this is how the back-end code generation routines accept an `EndToEndCompileRequest` that is optional, and only used to check whether "pass through" compilation is needed. We should probably look into cleaning this kind of logic up over time so that we don't need to violate the apparent separation of phases of compilation.

* In cases where separation of layers was being broken for the sake of GLSL features, I went ahead and ripped them out, since all of that should be dead code anyway.

* In many cases I increased the encapsulation of data in the core types to help track down use sites and make sure they are following invariants better.

* In cases where code was doing, e.g., `context-&gt;shared-&gt;compileRequest-&gt;session-&gt;getThing()` I have tried to introduce convenience routines so that the usage site is just `context-&gt;getThing()` to improve encapsulation and allow changes to be made more easily going forward.

* The `noteInternalErrorLoc` functionality was moved off of the compile request and into `DiagnosticSink`, since that is the one type you can rely on having around when you want to note an internal error. We may consider going forward if (and how) it should reset the counter used for noting locations on internal errors.

* A few APIs now take `DiagnosticSink*` arguments where they didn't before, and as a result some public APIs need to create `DiagnosticSink`s to pass in, before going ahead and ignoring the messages. In the future there should be variations of these APIs that accept an `ISlangBlob**` parameter for the output.

* fixup: missing include for compilers with accurate template checking (non-VS)

* fixup: review feedback
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Implement notion of a "container format" (#213)</title>
<updated>2017-10-16T20:12:11+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Tim Foley</name>
<email>tfoleyNV@users.noreply.github.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-10-16T20:12:11+00:00</published>
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<id>urn:sha1:f12c2552b3f494cbc8245edb90b32b93ca8a1539</id>
<content type='text'>
The big addition here is that the Slang "bytecode" is no longer treated as just a "code generation target" (`CodeGenTarget`) akin to DX bytecode (DXBC) or SPIR-V, but instead is a `ContainerFormat` that can be used to emit all the results of a compile request (well, currently just the IR-as-BC, but the intention is there).

Getting to this goal involved some prior checkins that eliminated bogus "targets" that weren't really akin to SPIR-V or DXBC: `-target slang-ir-asm` and `-target reflection-json`. Those targets were really in place to support testing, and so they've been made more explicit testing/debug options.

This change eliminates `-target slang-ir` and instead tries to allow the user to specify `-o foo.slang-module` as an output file name, that indicates the intention to output a "container" file that will wrap up all the generated code.

I've also gone ahead and generalized the existing `-target` option so that we are actually building up a *list* of code generation targets. This is largely just a cleanup, since it forces code to be more aware of when it is doing something target-specific vs. target independent. For example, reflection layout information lives on a requested target, and not on the compile request as a whole, and similarly output code is per-target, per-entry-point.

As a cleanup, I eliminated support for per-translation-unit output. This was vestigial code from back when I used to try and do HLSL generation for a whole translation unit instead of per-entry-point (which turned out to be a lot of complexity for little gain), and it was only being used in the `hello` example and the `render-test` test fixture - in both cases fixing it up was easy enough. I've stubbed out the old `spGetTranslationUnitSource` API, but haven't removed it yet.</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>First attempt at a Linux build (#193)</title>
<updated>2017-09-27T18:17:39+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Tim Foley</name>
<email>tfoleyNV@users.noreply.github.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-09-27T18:17:39+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.yummers.dev/slang.git/commit/?id=74f2f47cb63b02638270beecd20acea1a0f5665e'/>
<id>urn:sha1:74f2f47cb63b02638270beecd20acea1a0f5665e</id>
<content type='text'>
* First attempt at a Linux build

- Fix up places where C++ idioms were written assuming lenient behavior of Microsoft's compiler

- Add a few more alternatives for platform-specific behavior where Windows was the only platform accounted for.

- Add a basic Makefile that can at least invoke our build, even if it isn't going good dependency tracking, etc.

- Build `libslang.so` and `slangc` that depends on it, using a relative `RPATH` to make the binary portable (I hope)

- Add an initial `.travis.yml` to see if we can trigger their build process.

* Fixup: const bug in `List::Sort`

I'm not clear why this gets picked up by the gcc *and* clang that Travis uses, but not the (newer) gcc I'm using on Ubuntu here, but I'm hoping it is just some missing `const` qualifiers.

* Fixup: reorder specialization of "class info"

Clang complains about things being specialized after being instantiated (implicilty), and I hope it is just the fact that I generate the class info for the roots of the hierarchy after the other cases. We'll see.

* Fixup: add `platform.cpp` to unified/lumped build

* Fixup: Windows uses `FreeLibrary`

and not `UnloadLibrary`

* Fixup: fix Windows project file to include new source file

This obviously points to the fact that we are going to need to be generating these files sooner or later.
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Overhaul handling of entry points and translation units.</title>
<updated>2017-06-20T18:54:35+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Tim Foley</name>
<email>tfoley@nvidia.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-06-20T15:11:27+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.yummers.dev/slang.git/commit/?id=327f2b7ec50a7480b458d6d3ba8e2ca7fcdb8498'/>
<id>urn:sha1:327f2b7ec50a7480b458d6d3ba8e2ca7fcdb8498</id>
<content type='text'>
The main user-visible change here is that instead of `spAddTranslationUnitEntryPoint` we have `spAddEntryPoint`, to reflect that the list of entry points is "global" to a compile request.
As a result, `spGetEntryPointSource` now only needs the entry point index, and not the translation unit index.

There are a bunch more behind-the-scenes changes, though, reflecting a streamlining of the concepts related to compilation into a smaller number of classes.
Now there is:

- `Session` (unchanged) to manage the lifetimes of shared stuff like the stdlib

- `CompileRequest` (merges in `CompileOptions`) to handle all the lifetime related to a single invocation of the compiler

- `TranslationUnitRequest` (merges `TranslationUnitOptions`, `CompileUnit`) to represent a single translation unit ("module") that the user is trying to compile. This is a single file for HLSL/GLSL, but can be multiple files for Slang.

- `EntryPointRequest` (merges `EntryPointOption` and a bit of `EntryPointResult`) to track a single entry point that the user is asking to compile (that entry point always comes from a single translation unit)

A lot of functions used to take some combination of these and end up with really long signatures.
I've given most of the objects "parent" pointers so that they can get back to all the context they need, so most functions don't need as many parameters.

It may eventually be important to tease these apart again, in particular:

- The code-generation side of things (the `*Result` types) might need to be pulled out in case we want to codegen multiple times from the same AST

- Similarly, the layout stuff may also need to be pulled out, in case we want to lay things out multiple times with different rules.
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Rename `Slang::Compiler` -&gt; `Slang`</title>
<updated>2017-06-15T20:12:51+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Tim Foley</name>
<email>tfoley@nvidia.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-06-15T20:12:51+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.yummers.dev/slang.git/commit/?id=517513645afb8eaf4841e7b7035f1ba3a9c7cd57'/>
<id>urn:sha1:517513645afb8eaf4841e7b7035f1ba3a9c7cd57</id>
<content type='text'>
This gets rid of one unecessary namespace.
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Initial import of code.</title>
<updated>2017-06-09T20:44:59+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Tim Foley</name>
<email>tfoley@nvidia.com</email>
</author>
<published>2017-06-09T18:34:21+00:00</published>
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<id>urn:sha1:fcf83dbf9effab3bd98bad2b83b2468b7eb05cfd</id>
<content type='text'>
</content>
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