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A Modest Proposal: Standard for naming shaders and programs

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##A Modest Proposal##

As per version 1.0.13 of the Shader Editor Extension, it will look for #define SHADERNAME name in both the vertex shader code and the fragment shader code.

If name is defined for both shaders, and it's the same string, the name of the program is that string, e.g.: "Shadertoy".

If only one of the two is defined, the name of the program is "vs_name / fs_name", e.g.: "Quad / Shadertoy"

If there's no #define on any of the sources, the program name is the program number, e.g.: "Program 3"

At first I thought using a #pragma, but I was getting warnings:

The SHADERNAME string is pretty random, just thinking of something that wouldn't collide with other #defines. It can be changed, but I think the important part is that we all agree.

Does it make sense? Would this be something it'd be interesting for developers to identify shaders, programs, materials, etc. regardless of frameworks or libraries?

mattdesl commented Jun 22, 2015

Does that compile on all platforms? Just wondering, most macros that I've seen are valid GLSL code like:

#define FOO vec4(1.0)

Does getShaderSource preserve comments? If so it could also be done like so:

/*@name fancy-shader*/

marklundin commented Jun 23, 2015

+1 SHADER_NAME

Author

@mattdesl there are many ways, of course. I discarded #pragma because of the compiling warnings; and discarded using comments because it feels less hacky to use #define; I think getShaderSource can't be entirely relied on (from an instrumenting tool perspective) since a lot of WebGL programs delete the shaders once they're attached to the program.

I think the way the coder gets the relevant string (analyse the source independently, augment the WebGLProgram methods, inject set/getShaderSource) is not that important, as long as we agree on the basic things: it's in the source code, it's a #define, and it's called SHADER_NAME

I've tested OSX and Windows/ANGLE and the #define works correctly. Most of three.js #defines are not correct GLSL and there are no problems that I'm aware of.