re: feature requests for ref/def/decl drilldown

[Geof23]

Hey Daniel and everybody --

I think this is a really nice VS extension for something I've been really wanting lately. I found this and added it to my tools. The syntax highlighting is great, and autocomplete too! I thought you were a little closer to 'go to definition' stuff, but really, it's not far off at all. Could probably build a dictionary from the glsl ('ast') output (in the compilation step that's needed for every unit already, obviously), maybe using debug info (which is a compiler option) to source symbols to file/linenos

I'm wondering if:

1. It might be better, with the handling of exotic shaders, to go closer to home (like Khronos) for the compiler? I think they're about the reference for RT (and other) shaders. It might make it easier to keep things up to date
2. I'm not sure your workaround for #includes is really needed (when you've got something like glslangValidator dialed in). This project should be able to consume all the flavors as they're used in the wild

I dug in a bit, because I had the impression that I was missing the symbol lookup functionality only because in my installation of GLSL language integration, my added compiler wasn't set up correctly. I did manage to get my 'external' to behave pretty well, despite several (potentially troublesome) included c++ headers in my .rgens and such (but making it work did require adding one or two strategic #defines to the command line).

Khronos has this little gem, with a complete glsl front-end and spir-v generator (https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang) that could possibly work as a submodule

Anyway, this is an awesome VS integration, and I'm sure will become even more helpful for bringing shader development out of the dark ages

[danielscherzer]

Thanks for your feedback!
If I understand you correctly you suggest to integrate the C++ Glslang component into the extension. I think this is indeed a good way to move forward, but also a major undertaking so it will probably take some time till I have finished a stable version.