Post about 0.10 Release

Author: cwfitzgerald

_posts/2021-08-18-release-0.10.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: Release of a Pure-Rust v0.10 and a Call For Testing
+---
+
+gfx-rs community's goal is to make graphics programming in Rust easy, fast, and reliable. Our main projects are:
+
+  - [wgpu](https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu) is built on top of wgpu-hal and naga. It provides safety, accessibility, and portability for graphics applications.
+  - [naga](https://github.com/gfx-rs/naga) translates shader programs between languages, including WGSL. It also provides shader validation and transformation, ensuring user code running on the GPU is safe and efficient.
+
+If you've been following these releases you'll notice that gfx-hal is absent from this list. gfx-hal has now been deprecated in favor of a new abstraction layer inside of `wgpu` called `wgpu-hal`. To see more information about the deprecation, see the [0.9 release]({% post_url 2021-07-16-release-0.9-future %}) post.
+
+Following our release cadence every few months, we rolled out 0.10 through all of the gfx-rs projects! See [wgpu v0.10 changelog](https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#v010-2021-08-18) and [naga v0.6 changelog](https://github.com/gfx-rs/naga/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#v06-2021-08-18) for the details.
+
+## Pure-Rust Graphics
+
+`wgpu` has had many new changes, the most notible of which is the switch to our new Harware Abstraction Layer `wgpu-hal`. This includes completely rebuilt backends which are more efficient, easier to maintain, and signifigantly leaner. As part of this, we have shedded our last C/C++ dependency `spirv-cross`. We now are entirely based on `naga` for all of our shader translation. This is not only a marked achievement for rust graphics, but has made wgpu safer and more robust.
+
+The new `wgpu-hal`:
+ - Supports Vulkan, D3D12, Metal, and OpenGL ES with D3D11 to come soon.
+ - Has 60% fewer lines of code than gfx-hal (22k LOC vs 55k)
+ - Maps better to the wide variety of backends we need to support.
+
+Other notable changes within wgpu:
+ - Many api improvements and bug fixes.
+ - New automated testing infrastructure.
+
+`naga` has continued to matured significantly since the last release:
+ - `hlsl` output is now supported and working well.
+ - `wgsl` parsing has had numerous bugs fixed.
+ - `spirv` parsing support continues to be very difficult but improving steadily.
+ - With `wgpu-hal` now dependending on naga, all code paths have gotten signifigant testing.
+ - Validation has gotten more complete and correct.
+
+## Call For Testing
+
+This is an extremely big release for us. While we have confidence in our code and we have tested it extensively, we need everyone's help in testing this new release! As such we ask if people can update to the latest wgpu and report to us any problems or issues you face.
+
+If you aren't sure if something is an issue, feel free to hop on our [matrix chat](https://matrix.to/#/#wgpu:matrix.org) to discuss.
+
+## Thank You!
+
+Thank you for the countless contributors that helped out with this massive release! `wgpu`'s momentum is truely incredible to everyone's contributions and we look forward to seeing the amazing places wgpu will go as a project. If you are interested in helping, take a look at our [good-first-issues](https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Aupdated-desc+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22), our issues with [help wanted](https://github.com/gfx-rs/wgpu/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Aupdated-desc+label%3A%22help+wanted%22), or contact us on our [matrix chat](https://matrix.to/#/#wgpu:matrix.org), we are always willing to help mentor first time and returning contributors.
+
+Additionally, thank you to all the users who report new issues, ask for enhancements, or test the git version of wgpu. Keep it coming!
+
+Happy rendering!