Selecting graphics backend at runtime

[squk]

I'm curious if you have thoughts on allowing multiple graphics backends to be supported at once. Before fully inited of course. sokol-shdc likely wouldn't need any changes(although ergonomics would probably be better if it was changed?).

I'm toying around with including sokol multiple times in separate namespaces and providing a bridge to the rest of my app but I imagine this is a feature other users of sokol might want and would lend itself well to being a part of the core library. Would love to hear your thoughts :)

[floooh]

The most realistic option currently is to compile sokol_app.h + sokol_gfx.h into one DLL per backend and then you'd need to implement your own main(), load a specific DLL, and call into sapp_run() (instead of using the sokol_main() function), e.g. you'd need to compile with the SOKOL_NO_ENTRY macro defined so that sokol_app.h doesn't 'hijack' the main function... you'd also want to both compile the implementation and include the declaration with SOKOL_DLL defined.

There's an example here which links sokol as DLL (except for the part of loading a specific backend-DLL yourself via dlopen or LoadLibrary() - the sample is simply linked with a generic sokol.dll the 'traditional' way).

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/master/sapp/noentry-dll-sapp.c

[floooh]

PS: the other half of the puzzle is here:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/tree/master/libs/sokol

...e.g. note the sokol-dll.c file (in your case you'd want one source file per backend DLL), and here's the build system part:

https://github.com/floooh/sokol-samples/blob/91bd8c6f9f52149211d5508703cc805b67bfa399/libs/sokol/CMakeLists.txt#L105-L122