Vulkan SDK installation in Windows seems to be still required

[DanielAtCosmicDNA]

Environment:

• OS: Windows 11 PRO 22H2
• GPU and driver version: Quadro M1000M driver Nvidia 566.03
• SDK or header version if building from repo: I am using vulkan vcpkg package together with a fork from Vulkan-Samples repository
• Options enabled (synchronization, best practices, etc.):
  I have in debug mode _VKB_VALIDATION_LAYERS_ and _VKB_VALIDATION_LAYERS_BEST_PRACTICES_ set to true.

I have added VK_LAYER_ADD_PATH to the path where VkLayer_khronos_validation.json is in the CMAKE_BINARY_DIR/vcpkg_installed/x64-windows/bin.

Describe the Issue

The problem I am facing is that the hpp_push_descriptors sample code is not able to find the validation layers when I uninstall Vulkan SDK and rely solely on the vulkan validation layers and vulkan packages from vcpkg. When I reinstall Vulkan SDK, it then is able to find validation layers again...

Expected behavior

I would expect the validation layers to detect them regardless if vulkan SDK is installed in the host machine and utilise vulkan from vulkan vcpkg.

Reproduction
To reproduce the problem, make sure you have uninstalled Vulkan SDK in Windows and then:

1. clone the Vulkan-Samples with vcpkg repo.
2. run vcpkg install
3. run cmake --preset windows-release
4. run cmake --build --preset windows-release
5. run the executable with vulkan_samples command only - the other args will not affect as it will always select the hpp_push_descriptors sample.

Repeat the process and compare with Vulkan SDK installed.

[charles-lunarg]

VK_LAYER_ADD_PATH isn't sufficient if the build of Vulkan-ValidationLayers from vcpkg is creating a manifest with a "default search path" library path, eg "foo.dll" instead of "./foo.dll" in the "library_path" field.

If you add the path of the .dll file to PATH, then it should work.

If you run the samples with the environment variable VK_LOADER_DEBUG=all then logging about the missing dll should be printed. And if what I said above isn't the issue, this log will likely reveal what the actual issue is.

[spencer-lunarg]

@DanielAtCosmicDNA are you still having a problem here? I feel the issue is not related to the Validation Layers, but rather a system path issue

[DanielAtCosmicDNA]

The problem is still there...
Here are the logs with environment variable VK_LOADER_DEBUG=all with Vulkan SDK and without it:

withVulkanSDK.log

and after running the command:

winget remove VulkanSDK

debug.log

[DanielAtCosmicDNA]

@DanielAtCosmicDNA are you still having a problem here? I feel the issue is not related to the Validation Layers, but rather a system path issue

I suppose one the points for having a https://vcpkg.io/en/package/vulkan-validationlayers vcpkg package is to avoid the need to install Vulkan SDK to the host computer when actually Vulkan SDK can be installed in manifest mode to a local folder. So in my understanding, no path problem should occur when Vulkan Validation layers were supposedly linking to assets in the local manifest mode vcpkg folder instead of looking for them within standard would be Vulkan SDK folders.

[charles-lunarg]

The problem is still there... Here are the logs with environment variable VK_LOADER_DEBUG=all with Vulkan SDK and without it:

Yeah, that doesn't have any of the VK_LOADER_DEBUG=all output. Is this a file created by the samples? On windows, stderr output (which the loader writes too) does NOT go to the parent console. The only way to get Vulkan-Loader logging is through the debug utils callback. (this is because the Vulkan Samples & VkCube are windows programs, not console ones)

The solution? Just run vulkaninfo - this writes Vulkan-Loader output to the console with no hassel. Running vulkaninfo --summary is fine, since it'll print out just a short summary.

[DanielAtCosmicDNA]

Here is the vulkaninfo output: vulkaninfo.log
And here is vulkaning --summary: vulkaninfo --summary.log

[charles-lunarg]

I apologize but I meant to run vulkaninfo --summary with the VK_LOADER_DEBUG env-var set to all, so VK_LOADER_DEBUG=all.

[DanielAtCosmicDNA]

I apologize but I meant to run vulkaninfo --summary with the VK_LOADER_DEBUG env-var set to all, so VK_LOADER_DEBUG=all.

No worries, here it is: vulkaninfo-summary.log