LibraryC#Available

oneshader

An HLSL compiler for .NET, written in C# with no dependency beyond .NET itself. Modern HLSL goes in; SPIR-V, Metal Shading Language and WGSL come out, during dotnet build.

dotnet add package RecursiveAI.OneShader.Build

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A quick look

Put Shaders/Sprite.hlsl in a project. After dotnet build, the compiled shader and C# that matches its layout are in your assembly, with no reflection and no file I/O at run time.

The generated bindings

Program.csC#

using MyGame.Shaders;   // <RootNamespace>.Shaders
 
// embedded SPIR-V
ReadOnlySpan<byte> vs = Sprite.VSMain.SpirV;
// explicit layout, Size = 64
var frame = new Sprite.Frame { ViewProjection = camera };
uint set = Sprite.Bindings.Atlas.Set, binding = Sprite.Bindings.Atlas.Binding;

What it does

Shader errors are build errors

A mistake shows up on the HLSL line with a stable code, such as error OSH0300: 'Atlass' is not declared. Did you mean 'Atlas'?, not as a black screen at run time.

C# that matches the shader

Constant buffers, vertex inputs and bindings become blittable structs whose offsets equal the compiled shader’s, so a CPU/GPU layout mismatch fails the build.

Three targets from one front end

SPIR-V for Vulkan 1.2+ by default; Metal Shading Language and WGSL are opt-in per project. A feature a target can’t express is a diagnostic naming the target.

Checked against DXC and real GPUs

SPIR-V is validated with spirv-val and run on the GPU next to DXC’s output. WGSL goes through naga and a browser WebGPU run, MSL through Apple’s compiler and Metal.

Performance

About 2.4× faster than DXC as a NativeAOT binary

Compiling 68 corpus entry points, one process each, against the released DXC binary with SPIR-V output, warm. Every one of the 68 is faster.

Every result and the method

The packages

.Build
RecursiveAI.OneShader.Build compiles your *.hlsl files during dotnet build, embeds the targets you pick (OneShaderTargets), builds shader variants from keyword axes and generates the C# bindings.
The compiler
RecursiveAI.OneShader compiles at run time, for tools and hot reload, with a layout-compatibility check and a compile cache.
.Tool
RecursiveAI.OneShader.Tool is the oneshader command, with DXC’s core flags, for CMake, Make and scripts.
Shaders
Vertex, pixel and compute shaders in modern HLSL, HLSL 2021 templates included. Wave and quad intrinsics on all three targets, specialization constants, and 16-bit and 64-bit types where the target has them.
Pipeline layouts
Plain-data helpers turn a shader into the Vulkan, Metal or WebGPU layouts a renderer creates.
Safe on text you didn’t write
Bad input yields diagnostics, never an exception or a stack overflow, and the front end is fuzzed. No unsafe code and no reflection.
Version
1.2.0, the same for all three packages.
.NET
.NET 10, built with the .NET SDK. NativeAOT and trimming are supported. MIT or Apache-2.0.

Go further

GitHub NuGet Build package Compiler Command line Generated bindings Performance Changelog