Best Practices Validation

Best Practices Validation

Best Practices Validation is implemented in the VK_LAYER_KHRONOS_validation layer. When enabled, the Best Practices Object is intended to highlight potential performance issues, questionable usage patterns, common mistakes, and items not specifically prohibited by the Vulkan specification but that may lead to application problems.

Best Practices will ideally be run periodically along with normal validation checks so that issues may be addressed in early stages of development.

The specific areas covered by this layer are currently tracked in Github Issue #24: Best Practices/Assistant/Performance Layer. Requests for additional checks can be posted through the same issue, or by creating a new Github issue.

Enabling Best Practices Validation

Best Practices Validation is disabled by default. To turn on Best Practices validation, add the following to your layer settings file, vk_layer_settings.txt:

khronos_validation.enables = VK_VALIDATION_FEATURE_ENABLE_BEST_PRACTICES_EXT

To enable using environment variables, set the following variable:

VK_LAYER_ENABLES=VK_VALIDATION_FEATURE_ENABLE_BEST_PRACTICES_EXT

Some platforms do not support configuration of the validation layers with this configuration file. Programs running on these platforms must then use the programmatic interface.

Enabling and Specifying Options with the Programmatic Interface

The VK_EXT_validation_features extension can be used to enable Best Practices Validation at CreateInstance time.

Here is sample code illustrating how to enable it:

VkValidationFeatureEnableEXT enables[] = {VK_VALIDATION_FEATURE_ENABLE_BEST_PRACTICES_EXT};
VkValidationFeaturesEXT features = {};
features.sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_VALIDATION_FEATURES_EXT;
features.enabledValidationFeatureCount = 1;
features.pEnabledValidationFeatures = enables;

VkInstanceCreateInfo info = {};
info.pNext = &features;