xgpu

xgpu is an aggressively typed, red-squiggle-free Python binding of wgpu-native, autogenerated from the upstream C headers.

Not 'production ready'.

Install

Wheels are built for Mac (x86 only), Windows, and Linux for Python 3.7+:

pip install xgpu

Motivation

Why another webgpu/wgpu_native binding when wgpu-py already exists and is semi-mature?

• Typing: xgpu takes full advantage of Python type annotations, enabling quality of life features like IDE autocomplete for enum values
• Up to date: xgpu is 99% autogenerated from the headers, and aims to always be in sync with the latest wgpu-native release
• Performance: xgpu is substantially faster than wgpu

Conventions/Philosophy

xgpu is a mostly 1-to-1 binding of webgpu.h (+wgpu.h from wgpu-native).

General name conventions

xgpu largely tries to maintain the names from webgpu.h rather than localizing them into Python's conventions.

• Names keep their formatting from webgpu.h but lose WGPU prefixes: WGPUTextureSampleType -> TextureSampleType
• Fields: WGPUAdapterProperties.vendorName -> AdapterProperties.vendorName
• Member functions: wgpuDeviceHasFeature -> Device.hasFeature
• Enum values: WGPUTextureUsage_CopySrc -> TextureUsage.CopySrc
  • Names invalid in Python are prefixed with "_": WGPUBufferUsage_None -> BufferUsage._None, WGPUTextureDimension_2D -> TextureDimension._2D

Struct constructors

webgpu.h requires constructing various structs, for example WGPUExtent3D. These can be created in two ways:

# Recommended: create explicit initialized struct (note lowercase name)extents=xgpu.extent3D(width=100, height=100, depthOrArrayLayers=1)
# Alternative: create 0-initialized struct and then mutate valuesextents=xgpu.Extent3D()
extents.width=100extents.height=100extents.depthOrArrayLayers=1

Member functions

As a C API, webgpu.h follows typical C convention for member functions, which is to define them like:

uint32_twgpuTextureGetHeight(WGPUTexturetexture)

In xgpu these become genuine member functions, e.g.,

classTexture:
defgetHeight(self) ->int

Array arguments / fields

Some webgpu.h functions and structs take arrays using the convention of passing first the array item count, and then the array pointer, e.g.,

voidwgpuQueueSubmit(WGPUQueuequeue, size_tcommandCount, WGPUCommandBufferconst*commands)
typedefstructWGPUPipelineLayoutDescriptor {
// ...size_tbindGroupLayoutCount;
WGPUBindGroupLayoutconst*bindGroupLayouts;
} WGPUPipelineLayoutDescriptor;

These are translated to take lists:

classQueue:
defsubmit(self, commands: List[CommandBuffer]])
defpipelineLayoutDescriptor(*, bindGroupLayouts: List["BindGroupLayout"])

Enums and Flags

Enums are translated into IntEnums:

mode=xgpu.AddressMode.MirrorRepeatprint(int(mode)) # 2print(mode.name) # "MirrorRepeat"mode=xgpu.AddressMode(2)
print(mode.name) # "ClampToEdge"

Some enums are meant to be ORed together into bitflags. These can be combined in the natural way:

usage=xgpu.BufferUsage.MapRead|xgpu.BufferUsage.CopyDstprint(usage) # prints: 9

This works because IntEnums inherit all the int methods include bitwise operations; however, this discards the type information. A slightly more annoying but type-safer way is:

usage=xgpu.BufferUsage.MapRead.asflag() |xgpu.BufferUsage.CopyDstprint(usage) # prints: BufferUsage.MapRead | BufferUsage.CopyDst

You can also create typed flags from bare ints:

usage=xgpu.BufferUsageFlags(0b1001)
print(usage) # prints: BufferUsage.MapRead | BufferUsage.CopyDst

You can test for a particular flag with the python in operator:

has_map_read=xgpu.BufferUsage.MapReadinmybuffer.getUsage()

Callbacks

Callbacks must be explicitly wrapped in the appropriate callback type:

defmy_adapter_cb(status: xgpu.RequestAdapterStatus, gotten: xgpu.Adapter, msg: str):
print(f"Got adapter with msg:'{msg}', status: {status.name}")
cb=xgpu.RequestAdapterCallback(my_adapter_cb)

Chained structs

The webgpu.h structure chaining convention is represented by ChainedStruct, whose constructor takes a list of Chainable and automatically creates the linked chain.

shader_source="""..."""shader=device.createShaderModule(
nextInChain=xgpu.ChainedStruct(
[xgpu.shaderModuleWGSLDescriptor(code=shader_source)]
),
hints=[],
)

Byte buffers, void pointers

xgpu has two translations for void *: VoidPtr represents a pointer to opaque data (e.g., a window handle) while DataPtr represents a pointer to a sized data structure (e.g., texture data you want to upload).

For example,

# Note use of VoidPtr.NULL and VoidPtr.raw_castsurf_desc=xgpu.surfaceDescriptorFromWindowsHWND(
hinstance=xgpu.VoidPtr.NULL,
hwnd=xgpu.VoidPtr.raw_cast(self.window_handle),
)
# DataPtr.wrap can wrap anything supporting the 'buffer' interfacebytedata=bytearray(100)
wrapped=xgpu.DataPtr.wrap(bytedata)
queue.writeBuffer(
buffer=some_buffer, bufferOffset=0,
data=wrapped
)
# This includes numpy arraysmy_array=np.ones(100, dtype=np.float32)
wrapped=xgpu.DataPtr.wrap(my_array)

Codegen/Local Build

You will need bun to run the codegen. Deno might work but just go ahead and install bun. You will also need to have ruff and cffi installed in python (pip install ruff cffi).

Then:

python codegen/fetch_wgpu_bins.py
bun codegen/generate.ts
cd xgpu
python _build_ext.py
cd ..
pip install .