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Building Slang From Source

We support building with both Premake and CMake. Both systems are described below.

Building Slang with Premake

Windows Using Visual Studio

If you are using Visual Studio on Windows, then you can just open slang.sln and build your desired platform/configuration. slang.sln and associated project files are actually just generated using premake5. See instructions in premake section below for further explanation.

Whilst using the provided slang.sln solution is a fast and easy way to get a build to work, it does not make all binary dependencies available which can add features and improve performance (such as slang-llvm). To get the binary dependencies create the solution using premake5 described in a later section.

Other Targets

Slang uses premake5 to generate projects (such as Makefiles) that can then be used to build Slang binaries from source.

For Linux and other targets the section below on premake describes the process.

Some targets below are described as 'unofficial'. In practice this means that they are not tested as part of contiguous integration. Thus unfortunately it is quite possible from time to time for them to break on a merge of a PR. That said, if broken it is likely only very minor changes are needed to make them work again.

Generated Files

Slang as part of it's build process generates header files, which are then used to compile the main Slang project. If you use premake to create your project, it will automatically generate these files before compiling the rest of the Slang. These are the current header generations which are created via the slang-generate and other tools...

  • core.meta.slang -> core.meta.slang.h
  • hlsl.meta.slang -> hlsl.meta.slang.h

Other files that are generated have generated as part of their name.

It may be necessary or desirable to create a build of Slang without using premake.

One way to do this would be to first compile slang-generate and then invoke it directly or as a dependency in your build. Another perhaps simpler way would be to first compile the same Slang source on another system that does support premake, or using a preexisting build mechanism (such as Visual Studio projects on Windows). Then copy the generated header files to your target system. This is appropriate because the generated files are indentical across platforms. It does of course mean that if core.meta.slang or hlsl.meta.slang files change the headers will need to be regenerated.

Premake

Slang uses the tool premake5 in order to generate projects that can be built on different targets. On Linux premake will generate Makefile/s and on windows it will generate a Visual Studio solution. Information on invoking premake for different kinds of targets can be found here.

Slang includes premake5 as part of slang-binaries which is in the external directory. For the external directory to be setup it is necessary to have updated submodules with git submodule update --init.

If you are on a unix-like operating system such as OSX/Linux, it may be necesary to make premake5 executable. Use

% chmod u+x external/slang-binaries/premake/***path to premake version and os***/premake5

Alternatively you can download and install premake5 on your build system.

Run premake5 with --help to in the root of the Slang project to see available command line options (assuming premake5 is in your PATH):

% premake5 --help

To download and use binaries for a particular architecture the slang-pack package manager can be invoked via the additional --deps and --arch options. If --arch isn't specified it defaults to x64. On Windows targets, the Visual Studio platform setting should be consistent with the --arch option such that the appropriate binary dependencies are available. The --deps=true option just indicates that on invoking premake it should make the binary dependencies for the arch available.

Supported --arch options are

  • x64
  • x86
  • aarch64
  • arm

For Unix like targets that might have clang or gcc compilers available you can select which one via the -cc option. For example...

% premake5 gmake2 --cc=clang --deps=true --arch=x64

or

% premake5 gmake2 --cc=gcc --deps=true --arch=x64

If you want to build the glslang library that Slang uses, add the option --build-glslang=true.

Projects using make

The Slang project does not include Makefiles by default - they need to be generated via premake. Please read the section on your target operating system on how to use premake to create Makefiles.

If building a Makefile based project, for example on Linux, OSX or Cygwin, the configuration needs to be specified when invoking make, the following are typical...

% make config=release_x64
% make config=debug_x64
% make config=release_x86
% make config=debug_x86
% make config=release_aarch64
% make config=debug_aarch64

To check what compiler is being used/command line options you can add verbose=1 to make command line. For example

% make config=debug_x64 verbose=1

Windows

First download and install premake5 on your build system. Open up a command line and go to the root directory of the slang source tree (ie the directory containing slang.h).

Assuming premake5 is in your PATH, you can create a Visual Studio 2017 project for Slang with the following command line

% premake5 vs2017 --deps=true --arch=x64

For Visual Studio 2019 use

% premake5 vs2019 --deps=true --arch=x64

These should create a slang.sln in the same directory and which you can then open in the appropriate Visual Studio. Building will build all of Slang, examples and it's test infrastructure.

Linux

On Linux we need to generate Makefiles using premake. Please read the premake section for more details.

In the terminal go to the root directory of the slang source tree (ie the directory containing slang.h). Assuming premake5 is in your PATH use

% premake5 gmake2 --deps=true --arch=x64

To create a release build use

% make config=release_x64

You can vary the compiler to use via the --cc option with 'gcc' or 'clang' for example

Mac OSX

Note that OSX isn't an official target.

On Mac OSX to generate Makefiles or an XCode project we use premake. Please read the premake section for more details.

% premake5 gmake2 --deps=true --arch=x64

If you want to build glslang (necessary for Slang to output SPIR-V for example), then the additional --build-glslang option should be used

% premake5 gmake2 --build-glslang=true --deps=true --arch=x64

To build for release you can use...

% make config=release_x64

Slang can also be built within the Xcode IDE. Invoke premake as follows

% premake5 xcode4 --deps=true --arch=x64

Then open the slang.xcworkspace project inside of Xcode and build.

Cygwin

Note that Cygwin isn't an official target.

One issue with building on Cygwin, is that there isn't a binary version of premake currently available. It may be possible to make this work by building premake from source, and then just doing premake5 gmake2. Here we use another approach - using the windows premake to create a Cygwin project. To do this use the command line...

% premake5 --target-detail=cygwin gmake2 --deps=true --arch=x64

Testing

When slang is built from source it also builds tools to be able to test the Slang compiler. Testing is achieved using the slang-test tool. The binaries are placed in the appropriate directory underneath bin. It is important that you initiate the test binary from the root directory of the slang source tree, such that all tests can be correctly located.

For example to run the tests on a windows release x64 build from the command line, in the root directory of slang source tree you can use...

% bin\windows-x64\release\slang-test

Note that on windows if you want to run all of the tests from inside visual studio, it is necessary to set the Working Directory under "slang-test project" > "Configuration Properties" > "Debugging" > "Working Directory" to the root directory of the slang source tree. You can do this by setting it to $(ProjectDir)/../.. for all configurations.

If you only see 'unit-tests' being run (unit tests are prefixed with 'unit-tests/') then the working directory is not correctly set. Most tests are text files describing the test held in the tests directory in the root of the slang project.

See the documentation on testing for more information.

Building Slang with CMake

TLDR

cmake --workflow --preset release to configure, build, and package a release version of Slang.

Prerequisites:

Please install:

  • CMake
  • A C++ compiler with support for C++17. GCC, Clang and MSVC are supported
  • A CMake compatible backend, for example Visual Studio or Ninja

Optional dependencies include

  • CUDA
  • OptiX
  • NVAPI
  • Aftermath
  • X11

Get the Source Code

Clone this repository. Make sure to fetch the submodules also.

git clone https://github.com/shader-slang/slang --recursive

Configure and build

For a Ninja based build system (all platforms) run:

cmake --preset default
cmake --build --preset release # or --preset debug

For Visual Studio run:

cmake --preset vs2022 # or --preset vs2019
start devenv .\build\slang.sln # to optionally open the project in Visual Studio
cmake --build --preset release # to build from the CLI

Testing

build/Debug/bin/slang-test

See the documentation on testing for more information.

More niche topics

CMake options

Option Default Description
SLANG_VERSION Latest v* tag The project version, detected using git if available
SLANG_EMBED_STDLIB FALSE Build slang with an embedded version of the stdlib
SLANG_EMBED_STDLIB_SOURCE TRUE Embed stdlib source in the binary
SLANG_ENABLE_ASAN FALSE Enable ASAN (address sanitizer)
SLANG_ENABLE_FULL_IR_VALIDATION FALSE Enable full IR validation (SLOW!)
SLANG_ENABLE_GFX TRUE Enable gfx targets
SLANG_ENABLE_SLANGD TRUE Enable language server target
SLANG_ENABLE_SLANGC TRUE Enable standalone compiler target
SLANG_ENABLE_SLANGRT TRUE Enable runtime target
SLANG_ENABLE_SLANG_GLSLANG TRUE Enable glslang dependency and slang-glslang wrapper target
SLANG_ENABLE_TESTS TRUE Enable test targets, requires SLANG_ENABLE_GFX, SLANG_ENABLE_SLANGD and SLANG_ENABLE_SLANGRT
SLANG_ENABLE_EXAMPLES TRUE Enable example targets, requires SLANG_ENABLE_GFX
SLANG_LIB_TYPE SHARED How to build the slang library
SLANG_SLANG_LLVM_FLAVOR FETCH_BINARY How to set up llvm support
SLANG_SLANG_LLVM_BINARY_URL System dependent URL specifying the location of the slang-llvm prebuilt library
SLANG_GENERATORS_PATH `` Path to an installed all-generators target for cross compilation

The following options relate to optional dependencies for additional backends and running additional tests. Left unchanged they are auto detected, however they can be set to OFF to prevent their usage, or set to ON to make it an error if they can't be found.

Option CMake hints Notes
SLANG_ENABLE_CUDA CUDAToolkit_ROOT CUDA_PATH
SLANG_ENABLE_OPTIX Optix_ROOT_DIR Requires CUDA
SLANG_ENABLE_NVAPI NVAPI_ROOT_DIR Only available for builds targeting Windows
SLANG_ENABLE_AFTERMATH Aftermath_ROOT_DIR Enable Aftermath in GFX, and add aftermath crash example to project
SLANG_ENABLE_XLIB

LLVM Support

There are several options for getting llvm-support:

  • Use a prebuilt binary slang-llvm library: -DSLANG_SLANG_LLVM_FLAVOR=FETCH_BINARY, this is the default
    • You can set SLANG_SLANG_LLVM_BINARY_URL to point to a local libslang-llvm.so/slang-llvm.dll or set it to a URL of an zip/archive containing such a file
  • Use a system supplied LLVM: -DSLANG_SLANG_LLVM_FLAVOR=USE_SYSTEM_LLVM, you must have llvm-13.0 and a matching libclang installed. It's important that either:
    • You don't end up linking to a dynamic libllvm.so, this will almost certainly cause multiple versions of LLVM to be loaded at runtime, leading to errors like opt: CommandLine Error: Option 'asm-macro-max-nesting-depth' registered more than once!. Avoid this by compiling LLVM without the dynamic library.
    • Anything else which may be linked in (for example Mesa, also dynamically loads the same llvm object)
  • Have the Slang build system build LLVM: -DSLANG_SLANG_LLVM_FLAVOR=BUILD_LLVM, this will build LLVM binaries at configure time and use that. This is only intended to be used as part of the process of generating the portable binary slang-llvm library. This always builds a Release LLVM, so is unsuitable to use when building a Debug slang-llvm on Windows as the runtime libraries will be incompatible.
  • Do not enable LLVM support: -DSLANG_SLANG_LLVM_FLAVOR=DISABLE

To build only a standalone slang-llvm, you can run:

cmake --workflow --preset slang-llvm

This will generate build/dist-release/slang-slang-llvm.zip containing the library. This, of course, uses the system LLVM to build slang-llvm, otherwise it would just be a convoluted way to download a prebuilt binary.

Cross compiling

Slang generates some code at build time, using generators build from this codebase. Due to this, for cross compilation one must already have built these generators for the build platform. Build them with the generators preset, and pass the install path to the cross building CMake invocation using SLANG_GENERATORS_PATH

# build the generators
cmake --workflow --preset generators --fresh
mkdir my-build-platform-generators
unzip build/dist-release/slang-generators.zip -d my-build-platform-generators
# reconfigure, pointing to these generators
cmake \
  --preset release \
  --fresh \
  -DSLANG_GENERATORS_PATH=my-build-platform-generators/bin \
  -Dwhatever-other-necessary-options-for-your-cross-build
# perform the final build
cmake --workflow --preset release