eliemichel/WebGPU-Cpp

Default constructor for types

qhdwight opened this issue · 5 comments

qhdwight commented

What do we think about default constructors for every type?

A common idiom for RAII is for objects to have an "empty" state. Consider std::unique_ptr (null), std::vector (empty), etc. This is also the state assumed when you move the resources away from an object.

Currently I need to wrap all my types in a std::optional and it is a little tedious.

qhdwight commented

Actually found a temporary solution.

The problem was I had a struct which embedded wgpu variables. For example a wgpu::Instance. I can just change the definition to:

struct MyStruct {
    ...
    wgpu::Instance mInstance = nullptr;
    ...
}

I think default ctors should be added to mimic the above behavior.

eliemichel commented

Yep I should add a default constructor that initializes to nullptr indeed I noted this already and forgot!

Note however that this is not a RAII wrapper, rather a 0-overhead wrapper: it is only about syntactic sugar, and has no hidden behavior (well actually it initializes nextInChain to nullptr, but it's the only extra behavior compared to the C API). I have a RAII wrapper as well that I plan on adding as an option here (in something like webgpu-raii.hpp) but didn't find the time to clean it up yet!

  • 👍1
qhdwight commented

Uh oh... that means I am not freeing a LOT of resources. Thank you for the heads up.

Love the tutorials by the way. Super helpful.

qhdwight commented

It may also be nice to add support for designed initializers added in C++20: https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/aggregate_initialization

  • 👍1
eliemichel commented

Handles are now initialized to nullptr by default!

  • 😄1