Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Vulkan SDK 1.3+ (provides glslc compiler and vulkan.h)

• CMake 3.20+

• GCC 13+ or Clang 17+ (C++20)

• xxd (part of vim-common on Linux, Git Bash on Windows)

Building

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build

This builds the vc_core static library, plus vc_filter and vc_cast stubs. Production builds omit tests and benchmarks.

Note

vc_create_context, vc_create_column, vc_read_column, vc_filter, and vc_cast are currently stubs that return NULL. Only vc_dtype_size is functional.

Running Tests

cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DVC_BUILD_TESTS=ON
cmake --build build
cd build && ctest --output-on-failure

Debug builds enable Vulkan validation layers automatically. Tests should pass with zero validation errors.

Hello Compute

Verify your Vulkan toolchain with the standalone sandbox spike:

cmake -B build -DVC_SANDBOX=ON \
  -DVulkan_INCLUDE_DIR=$VULKAN_SDK/Include \
  -DVulkan_LIBRARY=$VULKAN_SDK/Lib/vulkan-1.lib
cmake --build build --target hello_compute
./build/sandbox/hello_compute

Expected output:

GPU: AMD Radeon RX 9070 (Vulkan 1.4.329)
PASS: All 1024 elements correctly incremented.

Library Usage (C API)

#include "vulkan_columnar/vc_context.h"
#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    printf("U32 element size: %u bytes\n", vc_dtype_size(VC_DTYPE_U32));
    printf("F64 element size: %u bytes\n", vc_dtype_size(VC_DTYPE_F64));
    return 0;
}