[SOLVED] CS COMP5822M Software Setup

COMP5822M Software Setup
1 Overview 1
2 Vulkan Implementation 1
3 The Vulkan SDK 2

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4 C++ compiler / IDE 2
5 Renderdoc (optional) 4
1 Overview
Quick links:
Vulkan SDK: VisualStudio: RenderDoc:
https://vulkan.lunarg.com/sdk/home https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/
https://renderdoc.org/
You will need the following software to complete the practical work in COMP5822M:
A Vulkan implementation
The Vulkan SDK
A (modern-ish) C++ compiler and/or development environment RenderDoc (optional)
COMP5822M assumes and has been tested with recent 64-bit Linux versions or 64-bit Windows 10 installa- tions. You will additionally need a sufficiently recent GPU. Other OSs and/or 32-bit builds are untested and unsupported. You might be able to get it to work if the system has support for Vulkan, but it is unlikely things will work out of the box.
It is further recommended that you use source control (e.g., git or similar) for your practical work. However, do not share/publish your solutions to either exercises or courseworks online! (For example, do not use public GitHub repos!)
2 Vulkan Implementation
The Vulkan implementation is provided by the graphics drivers for your graphics card (standalone software implementations of Vulkan do exist, but I would recommend against trying to use one for COMP5822M). The Vulkan documentation frequently refers to such drivers as ICDs (installable client drivers). Chances are you already have one installed. However, it is a good idea to update your graphics drivers if you have not done so recently. The drivers will also provide a Vulkan loader, which is needed to get access to the Vulkan API.
COMP5822M is targeting Vulkan version 1.2. Most desktop-class GPUs and drivers seem to support this. Check vulkan.gpuinfo.org to see what Vulkan versions have been reported for your GPU or wait for Exer- cise 1.1, in which you will learn how to enumerate available devices using Vulkan.

COMP5822M Software Setup 2
3 The Vulkan SDK
Grab the Vulkan SDK at https://vulkan.lunarg.com/sdk/home. Pick the one that is appropriate for your system. (Linux users might want to check their package manager to see if the SDK is available that way.)
COMP5822M has been tested with SDK version 1.2.198.1 from December 3, 2021. Make sure you get this version or a newer one. None of the optional components from the installer are required, but can choose to install them if you so wish.
The Vulkan SDK provides a few different components (although, for convenience, some are provided by the exercises and coursework code as well). The main components that we want are:
the validation layer, VK LAYER KHRONOS validation
the vkconfig[.exe] tool that allows us to conveniently configure the validation layer above
4 C++ compiler / IDE
The code provided with COMP5822M uses (parts of) C++17, so you will need a C++ compiler that has a functioning C++17 implementation. For Windows, Visual Studio 2019 or 2022 is recommended. For Linux, a recent GCC (probably version 8) is recommended, though most of the testing was done with GCC 10.3.
Linux GCC
Consult your systems package manager for installation of GCC and related software. If necessary, make sure to install the C++ components as well (g++).
Furthermore, you might want to make sure that you have a decent text editor with syntax highlighting for C++ and (modern) GLSL as well as auto-completion. The latter is especially useful when writing Vulkan code. Additionally, make sure that you have a debugger installed. If you know how to use gdb, it will do just fine.
Windows Visual Studio
If you do not have Visual Studio installed, you can get the Visual Studio Community 2022 edition: https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/.
The community edition is free for individual and academic use see information on the linked page for details. The code has been tested with both VS 2019 and 2022, so either will work. If you already have Visual Studio installed, make sure that you have the required C++ tooling available and, if necessary, update to the latest version of the tools for your VS version.
For a fresh install, first select Desktop development with C++ in the category Workloads (see Figure 1). In the category Individual components (see Figure 2), further select the following:
Compilers, build tools, runtimes Windows Universal CRT SDK SDKs, libraries, and frameworks Windows Universal C Runtime (optional) Code tools Git for Windows
The total installation seems to require about 9 GB of disk space.
You will be working with GLSL code quite a bit, but Visual Studio does not natively support GLSL source code. It is recommended that you install an extension that provides syntax highlight for GLSL code. To do so, go to Extensions Manage Extensions in the Visual Studio menu. This should bring up a popup (Figure 3) where you can manage and install extensions. Here, select Online in the left hand menu, and search for glsl in
The machines in the Visualization Teaching Lab (2.16 in Bragg) have Visual Studio 2022 pre- installed, along with the other software mentioned herein.
In contrast, the SoC Linux machines are stuck at GCC 4.8.5 ( from the forgotten ages of 2015), so you will not be able work on those very easily.
The Visual Studio install has occasionally given some trouble, where some key components were missing and it has been impossible to build standard C++ programs (despite selecting the C++ workload). The additional selections under Individual Components attempts to account for this. Nev- ertheless, Ive been unable to get a fresh Windows image to install and test VS 2022 from scratch. With VS 2022, the additional components might no longer be necessary. You may try this if you do, please let me know if it worked.

COMP5822M Software Setup 3
Figure1: VisualStudioCommunity2022installer,workloadselection.
Figure 2: Visual Studio Community 2022 installer, component selection. The Windows Universal SDK is shown as an example. Scroll through the list or use the Search components field to find the relevant components.

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Figure 3: Visual Studio Extensions Manager (Im using the dark theme). Note that you will need to select Online on the left hand side before searching for the extension.
the top-right search field. You should find an extension called GLSL language integration (for VS2022) [Preview]. Press Download to install the extension. You will likely need to restart VS to complete the installation.
5 Renderdoc (optional)
RenderDoc is a stand-alone graphics debugger, specifically designed to help debug graphics code using e.g. Vulkan, OpenGL or DirectX. RenderDoc can capture the commands that your application submits and allows you to view these after the fact. You can inspect the parameters that went into the commands, and in some cases view intermediate results and similar.
RenderDoc is available from https://renderdoc.org/. (Linux: as always, check your package manager.) Next steps
You may now start with Exercise 1.1, which will also help verify that the required software was indeed installed successfully.
Unfortunately, the extension is not installed on the machines in the Visualization Teaching Lab. Installation of the extension requires elevated privileges, so it is not possible to install it ourselves. I have asked IT to install the extension, and hopefully it will become available within the next weeks.
This does not replace the normal debugger, such as the visual debugger in Visual Studio or gdb in Linux. Those help you debug your C++ code, whereas RenderDoc specifically helps with looking at and analyzing e.g. the Vulkan commands that you execute.

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