Overview

There are three key phases in a shader’s lifetime (shown in context below):

Each phase finalizes the value for expressions in a certain category, as follows:

Evaluation Phase

Shader creation

• Finalizes values for const-expressions
• Sub-expressions can be:
  • literals,
  • @const function calls,
  • const-declared values

Pipeline creation

• Finalizes values for override-expressions
• Sub-expressions can be anything in a const-expression, plus
  • override-declared values,
  • values from GPUProgrammableStage.constants

Shader execution

• Finalizes values for runtime-expressions
• Sub-expressions can be anything in a override-expression, plus
  • let-declared values
  • any function call,
  • variable contents
  • reference or pointer to a variable

In Context