Optional Features/Extensions should be deprecated/removed.

[kumihoclub]

While built-in optional/features impl would seem helpful on the surface, there is no simple/friendly way to to reflect what features/extensions pass or fail back to the user both in internals and api-wise. I feel that the impls should be deprecated and eventually removed in favor of promoting a "feature levels" pattern, which is a common pattern ive seen where users configure multiple vkb::PhysicalDeviceSelector's as different conceptual "feature levels". if the best case doesn't pass, the next best is attempted and so on.

[charles-lunarg]

Agreed.

An example of this pattern in the docs would be good.

It would break API but well, I think its for the better. And its still not 1.0 so that's fine.

[charles-lunarg]

Finally got around to adding a deprecation notice. No plan on how long the deprecated API calls will be available, but best to give some notice. https://github.com/charles-lunarg/vk-bootstrap/pull/212

[DexterHaxxor]

These feature levels are definitely a great idea. but there should be way to do these in the API itself:

auto phys_ret = selector.set_surface(surface)
        .set_minimum_version(1, 2)
        .add_required_extension(VK_KHR_DYNAMIC_RENDERING_EXTENSION_NAME)
        .add_required_extension_features(VkPhysicalDeviceDynamicRenderingFeatures{
                .sType = VK_STRUCTURE_TYPE_PHYSICAL_DEVICE_DYNAMIC_RENDERING_FEATURES,
                .dynamicRendering = true,
        })
        .feature_level(1) // 0 is the default feature level, omitted above
        .add_required_extensions(VK_EXT_MESH_SHADER_EXTENSION_NAME)
        .add_required_extension_features(...)
        .select();
// handle errors
auto physical_device = phys_ret.value();
// reading physical_device.feature_level tells the application which features were enabled
fmt::print("device {} feature level {}\n", physical_device.name, physical_device.feature_level);

This should allow for supplying new VkPhyisicalDeviceXXXFeatures with on each feature level, should also allow setting the minimum Vulkan API version, generally everything that you can do in the default feature level should be doable in any feature level, they should be thought of as overrides, and the VkBootstrap library will attempt to create and select the device with the highest feature level.

We also need to create an alternative to feature levels, feature flags, that are not mutually exclusive, e.g. feature flags X & Y and feature level 2 could be enabled at the same time.

bool memory_budget;
physical_device_selector
        .feature_flag(&memory_budget)
        .add_required_extension(VK_EXT_MEMORY_BUDGET_EXTENSION_NAME);

// when initialising VMA
if (memory_budget) {
    vma_flags |= VMA_ALLOCATOR_CREATE_EXT_MEMORY_BUDGET_BIT;
}

These feature flags do not have to support every operation that feature levels support, for example, set_minimum_version does not make sense inside a feature flag.