// the find
sotrh/learn-wgpu
Guide for using gfx-rs's wgpu library.
A tutorial series teaching wgpu (Rust's WebGPU implementation) from scratch, covering windowing, pipelines, textures, lighting, normal maps, HDR, and compute shaders. Aimed at Rust developers who want to learn GPU programming without diving straight into raw Vulkan. Each chapter has working code you can run.
- Code is structured as independent per-tutorial crates so you can run any chapter in isolation without wading through a monorepo build system
- Covers both WGSL and legacy SPIR-V shader formats side-by-side, which is genuinely useful during the ecosystem's transition period
- Goes beyond basic rendering into practical topics like compute shaders, normal mapping, HDR tonemapping, and mouse picking — not just 'draw a triangle' territory
- Actively maintained with recent commits and a CI workflow for both native and WASM targets
- wgpu's API changes frequently and the tutorial openly admits it may lag behind — several tutorials still have .spv files committed alongside .wgsl, suggesting some sections haven't been fully updated
- The author self-describes as learning wgpu while writing this, and it shows: some explanations are shallow on the 'why' (e.g., bind group layouts, pipeline cache design) and focus only on getting things to compile
- No automated tests on the tutorial code itself — just CI builds. If a wgpu API break silently changes behavior rather than failing to compile, you won't know
- Showcase demos are frozen (no new PRs accepted) and some like imgui-demo likely bit-rotted given how fast the Rust GUI/wgpu ecosystem moves