vulkan-netbsd

An effort to bring the Vulkan software stack (Mesa / Lavapipe) to NetBSD, and to document and automate the process so it can be reproduced and maintained.

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Status: beta — Lavapipe Vulkan driver builds, installs, and registers on NetBSD

Milestone reached: Mesa configures, compiles, links, installs, and registers the Lavapipe software Vulkan driver on NetBSD 10.1 amd64, against LLVM 19.1.7. The driver (libvulkan_lvp.so, ~17 MB) installs into /usr/pkg/lib, and its ICD manifest (advertising Vulkan API 1.4) installs into /usr/pkg/share/vulkan/icd.d/, so a Vulkan loader on the system can discover it. ldd resolves every dependency cleanly. The entire process — environment setup, dependency builds, the Mesa build, and installation — is automated end to end and reproducible on a fresh install.

Prebuilt binaries are coming. The tooling to build, fingerprint, and publish prebuilt artifacts is in place, and the build scripts already know how to fetch and install a matching prebuilt instead of building from source. Once a build machine is publishing releases, installing the driver will be a download rather than a multi-hour build. That's the near-term direction.

What this is NOT (yet):

• Running Vulkan programs needs the loader. This project builds and installs the Vulkan driver (the Lavapipe ICD). Actually executing a Vulkan application also requires the Vulkan loader (libvulkan.so.1), which is the next component to bring up. Runtime execution is therefore not yet verified.

• One workaround is still in place. The build applies -Wno-error=format to sidestep GCC rejecting Mesa's %m format specifier on NetBSD. A proper upstreamable fix (using strerror(errno)) is pending.

Steps, scripts, and documents will continue to change as the loader and the release pipeline come together.

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Goal

NetBSD is currently the only major BSD without Vulkan support. The aim of this project is to:

1. Build the Vulkan software stack (Mesa's Lavapipe driver, which runs on the CPU via LLVM and needs no GPU) on NetBSD.

2. Document every step, including the dead ends, so the process is reproducible.

3. Automate the setup so a fresh machine can be brought to a build-ready state with a couple of scripts.

4. Eventually feed the necessary fixes upstream (to Mesa and to pkgsrc) and provide prebuilt binaries or a pkgsrc package, so that Vulkan on NetBSD becomes something you can simply install rather than build from source.

Scope and environment

• Target OS: NetBSD 10.1 (amd64), minimal ISO install.

• Host: VirtualBox VM.

• Build goal only: This targets compilation and linkage of the Vulkan stack. Runtime GPU acceleration is not available under VirtualBox; the software driver (Lavapipe) is the target.

Repository layout

vulkan-netbsd/
├── docs/
│   ├── 01-environment-setup.md    Base system + pkgsrc + build deps
│   ├── 02-source-dependencies.md  Dependencies not in pkgsrc (built from source)
│   ├── 03-mesa-build.md           Configure + compile Mesa (Lavapipe); port notes
│   └── 04-prebuilt-artifacts.md   Build-once / reuse prebuilt binaries
└── scripts/
    ├── setup-env.sh               Automates the environment setup
    ├── build-glslang.sh           Builds glslang (required by Mesa; not in pkgsrc)
    ├── build-mesa.sh              Clones + configures + compiles Mesa (Lavapipe)
    ├── install-mesa.sh            Installs the built driver + ICD manifest
    ├── lib-artifacts.sh           Shared: fingerprint + prebuilt fetch helpers
    └── package-artifacts.sh       Packages built binaries into release tarballs

Getting started

On a fresh, minimal NetBSD 10.1 (amd64) install, as root:

cd /root
ftp https://raw.githubusercontent.com/segaboy/vulkan-netbsd/main/scripts/setup-env.sh
sh setup-env.sh
. /root/.profile

ftp https://raw.githubusercontent.com/segaboy/vulkan-netbsd/main/scripts/build-glslang.sh
sh build-glslang.sh

ftp https://raw.githubusercontent.com/segaboy/vulkan-netbsd/main/scripts/build-mesa.sh
sh build-mesa.sh --build

ftp https://raw.githubusercontent.com/segaboy/vulkan-netbsd/main/scripts/install-mesa.sh
sh install-mesa.sh

build-mesa.sh --build clones, configures, and compiles Mesa, producing the Lavapipe Vulkan driver (libvulkan_lvp.so). install-mesa.sh then installs that driver and its ICD manifest into /usr/pkg and verifies the registration.

If a build is interrupted or the machine crashes, re-run the same command — the build scripts detect the existing build and resume automatically.

Together, these scripts take a fresh minimal install all the way to an installed, registered Vulkan software driver.

See docs/01-environment-setup.md for the full, commented walkthrough and notes on running over SSH.

Contributing / following along

This is a personal work-in-progress. Expect churn. The documentation is written as a running record of what actually worked (and what didn't), so it doubles as field notes for anyone attempting the same port.

License

The original work in this repository — the scripts, documentation, and any patches authored here — is released under the MIT License (see LICENSE).

This project builds, installs, and (optionally) redistributes third-party software that is not covered by that license and retains its own:

• Mesa — primarily MIT-licensed (some components under other permissive licenses).

• glslang — permissive licenses (BSD-style, Apache 2.0, and Khronos terms).

• LLVM — Apache 2.0 with LLVM Exceptions. LLVM is installed separately via pkgsrc and is not redistributed by this project.

Prebuilt artifacts produced by scripts/package-artifacts.sh bundle the relevant upstream license texts (under share/licenses/) so that binary redistribution preserves each project's attribution. If you publish artifacts, keep those files intact.