On Linux with RADV (and the Steam Deck) the game points MESA_SHADER_CACHE_DIR at mesa-cache beside the exe, a folder
nothing else writes, but left Mesa's limit of 1 GB. The stage libraries the library warm builds in play are kept only
in the driver's cache, and a preparation of every shader variant is larger than that limit, so what did not fit was
compiled again in play. The limit is now 8 GB in that folder unless MESA_SHADER_CACHE_MAX_SIZE is set, as NVIDIA's
cache beside the game already has.
Checked: all runtime files compile. Not run on Linux.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The preparation translates every shader and builds each one's stage library, so a pipeline a draw meets for the first time is linked in 2 to 6 ms. A mesh pipeline has no stage libraries: on an install that never drew it, it compiles whole in play, 0.2 to 1.1 s with its draws left out of the picture (18 of them on a first visit of Kokiri Forest). Whole pipelines were built ahead only from the folder's own pipeline-keys.bin.
tools/pipeline_list.py merge folds the pipeline-keys.bin and shader-answers.bin of game folders that were played into one list file: every key record once, with the answers record of each shader it names. A record names its shaders by input id, which depends on the game's code and the answers alone, and holds the game's pipeline state; what depends on the GPU is derived when the pipeline is built, so a record made on one machine is good on another with the same game version and runtime. Four folders on this PC give 5,432 records, 317 of them mesh pipelines (147 KB of keys).
tools/prepare_shaders.py reads the list (tools/data/pipeline_list.bin, data/pipeline_list.bin in a release folder, or --pipeline-list), adds its shader variants to the seed and writes its records as seed-pipeline-keys.bin. nx2navi.exe --prepare-shaders builds the mesh pipelines among them after the seed is translated and saves the pipeline cache before the stage libraries are built (NX2NAVI_PREPARE_PIPELINES=all builds the vertex pipelines too); --warm-shaders does it again after an update or a new driver, and --prepare-pipelines is that step alone. The pipelines go into the caches and are not kept or added to the folder's own key file, so they cost no start-up time or video memory until a draw meets them. A marker file keeps a driver that crashes on one of them from failing every preparation.
The list is derived from game data and stays out of the repository: check_content.py refuses files recorded from a game folder by their first bytes, and make_kit.py, make_launcher.py and make_release.py carry a list given with --pipeline-list. All three now also carry pipeline_list.py, which prepare_shaders.py imports.
Checked without the game: tests/pipeline_list_test.py, and prepare_shaders.py --no-run on the game files with a list of 317 mesh pipelines (all 266 shader variants found in this game version, 177 new to the seed). The build step in nx2navi.exe compiles and links and has not been run.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.2 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The first part of this pull request (the cache beside the exe with an 8 GiB limit) was already in. This
is the rest: nothing is set without NVIDIA's kernel driver, neither variable is set when the folder cannot
be made or written (the driver caches nothing in such a folder), the log says which folder and limit hold,
and a game run sets the drivers' cache variables in main before any of its threads can load a Vulkan
driver (vk_device.c vk_driver_cache_env); the other modes still set them in create_instance. On Windows
that only moves the MESA_SHADER_CACHE_DIR setenv earlier.
Pull request #369 by mooki000, taken as it is. The Linux part is not compiled or run here.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.2 <noreply@anthropic.com>
NVIDIA's Linux driver compiles into a disk cache in ~/.cache/nvidia, shared with every program, and a process adds at most
1 GiB to it (__GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SIZE); a start that finds more than that in several files deletes the later ones.
nx2navi.exe --prepare-shaders builds the 42,142 variants of game 1.1.1 in one process, about 1.5 GB: on the default limit it
stored about 30,700 of them, and the first start after the preparation compiled the rest (and the pipelines built from
them) again.
Unless the environment sets them, the game now points __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_PATH at nvidia-cache beside the exe (made
here, the driver only makes GLCache inside it) and __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SIZE at 8 GiB before its first Vulkan call, as it
does for Mesa's cache. The docs name both.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Comments say what the code does and why, docs/maxwell.md keeps the Maxwell facts, and fetch_refs.sh clones only the checkout the build reads. Code is unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
