Prerequisites

You will need:

Odin language
VSCode
Odin Language VSCode Extension
Vulkan SDK
GLFW
Slang VSCode Extension (optional but recommended for editing shaders)
clang-format (optional but recommended for formatting slang shaders)
RenderDoc (optional but recommended for GPU debugging - see RenderDoc page)

Plus, depending on your OS, one of the following VSCode debugger extensions:

Windows: C/C++ VSCode Extension (for cppvsdbg - see below)
Linux: CodeLLDB VSCode Extension (install it from VSCode the first time you press F5)

Odin language

Follow the instructions on the Odin install page.

At the end you should be able to execute:

odin version

Output example:

odin version dev-2026-07-nightly:819fdc7

VSCode

I will use VSCode because it’s the IDE I commonly use but feel free to use any IDE you prefer. All the projects in the repository are setuped for VSCode.

Follow the instructions on the VSCode download page.

At the end you should be able to open VSCode from your start menu or via the code command.

Odin Language VSCode Extension

This extension will provide a Language Server (LSP) which allows VSCode to validate your odin code, have code documentation and code formatting.

From VSCode, go to Extensions which should be available from the side bar (Default shortcut is Ctrl-Shift-X). Search for Odin Language. Be sure you select the Odin language extension published by Daniel Gavin and click install.

For more instructions: the ols repository on GitHub.

The first time you start a project with a .odin file, the ols.json file should be created at the root of your project. This file contains configuration for the Odin Language Server. The list of the available settings are defined in the ols configuration section. This file is already present for each project in this repository.

The first time you will open a .odin file, the extension will ask via a notification to install the latest version. You need to click Yes. Otherwise the extension will not install.

Vulkan SDK

Vulkan SDK is required to activate the validation layer. It helps a lot when developping and debugging Vulkan applications.

Follow instructions:

Windows: Vulkan SDK - Windows getting started
Linux: Vulkan SDK - Linux getting started
Mac: Vulkan SDK - Mac getting started

GLFW

GLFW handles the window, the inputs and the surface for us. This project uses Odin’s bundled vendor:glfw collection, so the way it links depends on your OS.

On Windows and macOS, Odin ships a prebuilt static GLFW library in its vendor/glfw/lib/ folder, so there is nothing to install. The build picks it up automatically.

Linux

Linux links against the system’s GLFW, so you need the development package:

Debian / Ubuntu:
```
sudo apt install libglfw3-dev
```
Fedora / RHEL:
```
sudo dnf install glfw-devel
```
Arch:
```
sudo pacman -S glfw
```

If you would rather link statically, drop a libglfw3.a next to Odin’s vendor/glfw/lib/ and build with GLFW_SHARED=false:

odin build . -debug -define:GLFW_SHARED=false

macOS

By default Odin uses the bundled lib/darwin/libglfw3.a static library, so no extra install is needed.

If you prefer the dynamic build (GLFW_SHARED=true), install it through Homebrew:

brew install glfw

Windows

By default Odin uses the bundled glfw3_mt.lib static library, so no extra install is needed.

If you want the DLL build (GLFW_SHARED=true), grab the precompiled Windows binaries from the GLFW download page, put glfw3.dll next to your executable and build with:

odin build . -debug -define:GLFW_SHARED=true

C/C++ VSCode Extension (Windows only)

On Windows, the project uses the Visual Studio Windows debugger (cppvsdbg) to speed up the debugging process. cppvsdbg is provided by the C/C++ extension from Microsoft.

From VSCode, go to Extensions (Ctrl-Shift-X), search for C/C++, select the one published by Microsoft and click install.

For more information: C/C++ extension on the VSCode Marketplace.

You do not need Visual Studio itself, only the extension. The extension ships its own copy of the debugger engine.

The reason we use cppvsdbg on Windows instead of CodeLLDB is to speed up debugging. On my PC, creating the Vulkan instance while debugging takes around 2.5 s using CodeLLDB and only around 260 ms with cppvsdbg. cppvsdbg also has the symbolOptions.moduleFilter feature, which lets us tell the debugger to skip symbols for VkLayer_*.dll (the 117 MB PDB in the Vulkan SDK), which cuts another 100 ms when creating the Vulkan instance. See VSCode Project Setup for the full rationale.

On Linux there is no PDB, but LLDB still parses the validation layer’s DWARF debug info eagerly. CodeLLDB’s symbols.load-on-demand setting (already wired up in launch.json) keeps it lazy, so the C/C++ extension is not needed there.

Slang VSCode Extension

I suggest you install the Slang extension for VSCode to have color highlighting and errors when editing shaders (.slang files).

Search for ‘Slang’ in the Extensions panel in VSCode and click install.

For more information: the Slang VSCode extension on GitHub.

clang-format

clang-format is required for auto formatting with the Slang VSCode Extension.

Linux

Debian / Ubuntu:
```
sudo apt install clang-format
```
Fedora / RHEL:
```
sudo dnf install clang-format
```
Arch:
```
sudo pacman -S clang-format
```

macOS

brew install clang-format

Windows

Navigate to https://llvm.org/builds/
Click on ‘Windows installer (64-bit)’ in the ‘Windows snapshot builds’ section to download the installer
Execute the downloaded .exe to install LLVM which includes clang-format
- IMPORTANT: Select Add LLVM to the system PATH (for all users or for current user does not matter)

Test clang-format installation

In a terminal:

clang-format --version

You should see something like:

clang-format version ....

Testing your installation

Open the folder src/01_test_setup using VSCode or your editor of choice and build and start the project (F5 by default in VSCode).

If all goes right, you should see in the terminal something like:

Test setup
--------------------------
GLFW... OK!
Vulkan... OK!
Vulkan SDK path... OK!
Vulkan validation layers... OK!
Slang compiler found... OK!

Good job, everything is setup correctly!

The first time you press F5 in a step folder, VSCode may prompt you to install the debugger extension required for your OS (C/C++ on Windows, CodeLLDB on Linux). Click Install and reload VSCode when asked. Subsequent runs start the debugger immediately.