Crate vulkan_rust 

Ergonomic Vulkan wrapper built on generated FFI bindings.

vulkan-rust provides safe-ish wrappers around the raw Vulkan API exposed by vulkan-rust-sys. The raw types live in the re-exported vk module; this crate adds ergonomic methods on Entry, Instance, and Device that handle output parameters, two-call enumeration, and error checking.

Quick start

use vulkan_rust::{Entry, LibloadingLoader};

let loader = unsafe { LibloadingLoader::new() }?;
let entry = unsafe { Entry::new(loader) }?;
// entry is now ready to create instances, enumerate layers, etc.

Panics

Wrapper methods on Instance and Device panic if the underlying Vulkan function pointer was not loaded. This happens when calling a command from an extension or Vulkan version that was not enabled at instance or device creation time. The panic message names the missing command (e.g., "vkCmdDrawMeshTasksEXT not loaded").

Core Vulkan 1.0 commands are always loaded and will not panic.

Crate structure

Module	Purpose
vk	Re-export of vulkan-rust-sys,raw #[repr(C)] types, handles, enums
Entry	Vulkan entry point,loads the library, enumerates layers/extensions
Instance	Vulkan instance,physical device queries, instance-level commands
Device	Vulkan logical device,all device-level commands
bytecode	SPIR-V byte alignment helpers
Version	Decoded Vulkan version (major.minor.patch) from a packed u32

Guide

The companion vulkan_rust Guide covers Vulkan concepts in depth:

Topic	Guide chapter
First steps	Hello Triangle tutorial
Handles, lifetimes, parent-child	The Vulkan Object Model
Heaps, allocation, mapping	Memory Management
Fences, semaphores, barriers	Synchronization
Attachments, subpasses	Render Passes & Framebuffers
Graphics & compute pipelines	Pipelines
Layouts, pools, sets	Descriptor Sets & Resource Binding
Recording & submission	Command Buffers
Extension struct chains	The pNext Extension Chain
Debug messenger, layers	Validation Layers & Debugging
Safety model, two-crate design	Design Decisions
Error types, Result pattern	Error Handling Philosophy
Porting from ash	Migration Guide
C API to Rust mapping	C-to-Rust Reference

Feature flags

Flag	Default	Description
surface	yes	Enables required_extensions and SurfaceError for window surface creation via raw-window-handle. Disable with default-features = false for headless use.

Re-exports

pub use bytecode::BytecodeError;

pub use bytecode::cast_to_u32;

Modules

bytecode

SPIR-V bytecode alignment helper.

vk

Raw Vulkan FFI types generated from vk.xml.

Structs

Device

Wrapper around a VkDevice handle and its loaded command table.

Entry

Entry point into the Vulkan API.

Instance

Wrapper around a VkInstance handle and its loaded command table.

LibloadingLoader

Default Loader implementation backed by libloading.

Version

Decoded Vulkan API version (major.minor.patch).

VkError

Wrapper around vk::Result that implements std::error::Error.

Enums

LoadError

Error returned when the Vulkan shared library cannot be loaded.

SurfaceError

Error returned by surface creation.

Traits

Loader

Abstraction over loading symbols from the Vulkan shared library.

Functions

required_extensions

Instance extensions required for surface creation on this platform.

Type Aliases

VkResult

Vulkan API result type.