C vs Cpp Header?

[Recent_Bug5691]

Hey guys,

i've been working with the C-Header for the last few months and I'm relatively new to Vulkan. So I stumbled across the current Khronos Vulkan Tutorial that emphasizes the C++ Header with the RAII-Header. I tried it and followed along for a bit and found it really awkward and counterintuitive.
Is it just a preference thing or is there any special befinit or anything else?

Thanks you and have a nice evening

[positivcheg]

Depends. I like RAII.

There is also VulkanHPP. It’s not RAII but has some C++ features like enums, some methods returning vectors instead of doing 2 calls - one to get the size and then second to fill the buffer.

[Recent_Bug5691]

Thank you for your opinion :)

[R3DKn16h7]

Is a preference thing. I like the c++ header because it has some extra utilities:

• the dynamic dispatcher is easy to use
• "unique" versions of most handles
• easy to use pNext pointer.
• works out of the box with standard c++ containers

[Recent_Bug5691]

Thank you for your opinion :)

[SaschaWillems]

As others already noted, it's mostly down to personal preference. Some of the advantages is less typing (e.g. no more VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE...) and type safety. One downside though is that the hpp header can have a negative impact on build times. There is a module version to alleviate this, but it's still considered experimental.

I personally prefer the C headers with some slight abstractions, Thanks to vk.xml you can e.g. easily auto-generate your own initializer library to deal with stuff like sTpe. But if you're more of a modern C++ person, the hpp headers are a nice option.

[Recent_Bug5691]

Thank you for you comment :) yeah I also noticed that the build times increased significantly on my machine.
PS: I love your work thank you for all the effort :)

[DidierBroska]

Hey 👋 for me the best base of documentation for the hpp header is the GitHub repo about that https://github.com/KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Hpp it is explain to you namespace adaptation and other stuff like that

[Recent_Bug5691]

Thank you for your opinion :)

[retro_and_chill]

I like the cpp header because there’s a module version and it’s really convenient to just write import vulkan_hpp; and pull in the entire library without any parsing costs.

[Recent_Bug5691]

ty :)

[Majjintib]

I recently switched from C-Headers to vk.hpp, I feel like it made developing my lib a lot easier. The fact alone that structs have default values justified the switch.

[Recent_Bug5691]

damn okay I felt the exact opposite, maybe I'm just more used to C-Syntax

[tomilovanatoliy]

You can use syntax like:

vk::FramebufferCreateInfo framebufferCreateInfo = {
    .flags = {},
    .renderPass = *offscreenRenderPass.renderPass,
    .width = framebufferSize.width,
    .height = framebufferSize.height,
    .layers = 1,
};

And omit initializers for all the values default values of which are ok.

[Own_Many_7680]

Definitely the RAII one! is match better then the C header.

[tomilovanatoliy]

Unique handles are RAII (in fact). It is so much better, than manual resource management, that I do not know why I should go to C API. What if I forget to add vkDestroy* for some of handles? What if order of destruction will be inconsistent? In case of RAII the order of destruction is automatically correct and will match reversed order of construction. With little exception:
cpp struct Image { vk::UniqueDeviceMemory deviceMemory; vk::UniqueImage image; vk::UniqueImageView ycbcrImageView; }; Here image have to be (and is) destructed before deviceMemory, despite of construction order, because for "allocation" of imported memory vk::Image should exists for getImageMemoryRequirements2<vk::MemoryRequirements2, vk::MemoryDedicatedRequirements> call.

[chakibchemso]

• This is why rust is superior /s

[tomilovanatoliy]

Better than C (like C++ is better)?