WACS.WASI.GFX.Silk 0.2.1-preview

WACS.WASI.GFX.Silk

Silk.NET/SDL + wgpu-native backend for WACS.WASI.GFX. A single backend drives all four wasi-gfx WIT packages (wasi:graphics-context, wasi:surface, wasi:frame-buffer, wasi:webgpu) against one SDL window, mixing Silk.NET (SDL2 + WebGPU.NET) and wgpu-native.

Status

Feature-complete across CPU and GPU paths. Verified through both the interpreter component path and the transpiler direct-link path against the parity fixtures shipped in Spec.Test/components/fixtures/ (CPU wasi-gfx-rectangle / -triangle; GPU wasi-webgpu-hello-compute / -hello-render / -game-of-life; full swap-chain wasi-webgpu-game-of-life-windowed).

Paths

CPU path (graphics-context + surface + frame-buffer)

• Opens an SDL window, dispatches OS events (resize / frame / pointer / key) into wasi:io/poll.pollables on the surface via ManualResetPollable.Signal().
• frame-buffer.buffer.set(RGBA8 bytes) → SDL_UpdateTexture → SDL_RenderCopy → SDL_RenderPresent.
• SilkContext.GetCurrentBuffer() returns a per-frame SilkAbstractBuffer (a pooled byte[] sized to width × height × 4) that the guest fills and Present() blits.

GPU path (webgpu + swap-chain bridge)

• SilkGpuBackend wraps wgpu-native through Silk.NET.WebGPU. All of the headless surface (adapter / device / buffer / pipeline / queue / compute pass / render pass / copy-texture-to-buffer / map-async readback) is covered.
• SilkGpuDevice.ConnectGraphicsContext(ctx) is the swap-chain bridge: it reaches into the wasi-gfx-side SilkSurface, drops the SDL renderer's hold on the window (so the wgpu Metal layer can claim the CAMetalLayer), dispatches SDL_Metal_CreateView + MetalGetLayer through MainThreadDispatcher (AppKit requires NSView creation on the main thread), and configures the wgpu surface against the device.
• context.get-current-buffer() returns the swap-chain texture; texture.from-graphics-buffer(buf) resolves it back to a wgpu GPUTexture for the render pass; present() calls wgpuSurfacePresent.

Usage

# Interpreter component path:
wacs run --wasi-gfx --windowed --call start my.component.wasm

# Transpiler direct-link path (canonical wasip2 workflow):
wacs run --wasip2 --wasi-gfx --windowed --call start my.component.wasm

--wasi-gfx loads Wacs.WASI.GFX.Silk and registers it for both the CPU host and the GPU host. --windowed reserves the calling (main) thread for the SDL event loop and runs the guest on a worker. --call start selects the wasi-gfx fixtures' exported start: func() entrypoint (the cargo-component convention, distinct from the WASI-cli _start the CLI defaults to).

Or programmatically:

using var host = runtime.UseWasiGfx(b =>
 b.WithBackend(new SilkGfxBackend()));
host.Backend!.RunMainLoop(ct); // call from main thread

See for programmatic-embedding details (interpreter + transpiler paths), the for the webgpu contract assembly, and for multi-host chaining.

Threading model

Driving an OS window means owning the main thread on macOS (AppKit hard requirement). Contract: embedder runs wasm on a worker thread and calls host.Backend.RunMainLoop(ct) on the main thread to pump the SDL event loop until ct fires. wacs run --windowed does this automatically.

wgpu-native adapter / device / queue / pipeline / queue.submit / surface.configure / get-current-texture / present are internally thread-safe and run from the worker. The exceptions that route through MainThreadDispatcher are SDL window creation (SilkSurface's ctor) and SDL_Metal_CreateView (SilkGpuDevice.ConnectGraphicsContext).

Platform support

Headless GPU works everywhere wgpu-native works; only the SDL→wgpu swap-chain bridge is gated to macOS today. Wiring SurfaceDescriptorFromWindowsHwnd / SurfaceDescriptorFromXlibWindow / SurfaceDescriptorFromWaylandSurface mirrors the macOS path; the wgpu-native and Silk APIs are present, just not yet wired.