KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Cross

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

2493 stars · 702 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

SPIRV-Cross is a tool and C++ library from Khronos for parsing SPIR-V binaries, performing reflection, and decompiling them back to high-level shader languages like GLSL, HLSL, and Metal Shading Language. It also emits JSON reflection data and provides APIs for building Vulkan pipeline layouts.

Use cases

• convert SPIR-V bytecode back to readable GLSL
• translate SPIR-V shaders to Metal Shading Language for iOS/macOS
• decompile SPIR-V to HLSL for Direct3D
• reflect on SPIR-V to build Vulkan pipeline layouts
• dump shader reflection metadata as JSON
• port Vulkan shaders to Metal or DirectX

When to choose

• you need to consume SPIR-V and emit human-readable shader source
• you are building a Vulkan-to-Metal or Vulkan-to-D3D translation layer
• you need shader reflection to set up Vulkan descriptor sets and pipeline layouts
• you want a mature, Khronos-maintained C++ library with wide platform support

When to avoid

• you only need to compile high-level shaders to SPIR-V (use glslang or DXC instead)
• you need the deprecated C++ shader output feature
• you want a runtime shader compiler rather than a cross-compiler/decompiler

Facets

library · maturity stable

compiler parser developer-tools graphics developer-tools compilers windows cross-platform cpp spir-v shader-translation glsl hlsl metal-shading-language vulkan reflection disassembler khronos game-development linux macos android ios

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