GLSL Compute shader debugging

Developer Tools Nsight Visual Studio Edition
1

I’m a little bit perplexed at the moment in that it seems impossible to properly debug GLSL compute shaders anywhere!

I installed the latest Nsight happy to see it now has support for the GTX1080 but it seems only for CUDA debugging. I then notice a forum post that says GLSL debugging works for older Kepler cards still so I was about to put in a GTX680 but then notice that in the nsight docs you can’t step through GLSL compute shaders even on kepler! I believe this is also the case for Vulkan which I intend to eventually switch to but not yet.

If it makes nvidia feel better I did attempt the same for another vendors GPU using CodeXL and it’s the same problem. Their GPUPerfStudio won’t work either for my latest GL programs - it just freezes. I couldn’t even consider properly debugging OpenCL2 compute shaders on CodeXL btw as it doesn’t support atomics in kernels. Due to the current state of play of SPIRV switching shaders to a cross vendor C subset from GLSL now is too soon and not ready.

Sure I suspect I could switch to CUDA and not have problems on the GTX1080 debugging apart from I need a vendor neutral short term solution until things work out for everything to be in Vulkan anyway.

So for the sake of developer sanity could nvidia please support GLSL compute shader debugging in Nsight very soon? Please.

2

Hi,

As you see in the release note, Nsight Shader Debug doesn’t support GLSL Compute Shader Debug right now. I am not sure about the plan or schedule, but I will take a track for your request and let you know if there are some update.

Thanks
An

3

I’m also really interested in this. I’ve spend hours looking for an IDE that will allow me to write and debug GLSL.

There’s at least one majoy VFX package in the Media & Entertainment industry that requires GLSL coding, so this would be really handy to have for a shader developer.

4

Hi,

Nsight support GLSL Shader Debug (except compute shader) and HLSL Shader Debug on Kepler GPU right now.

Thanks
An