wgpudawn

WebGPU for Python, on Dawn.

See it run in your browser: the pygfx examples, live, on wgpudawn.

wgpudawn is the API of wgpu-py with Dawn (Google's WebGPU implementation, the one in Chrome) as its backend, instead of wgpu-native.

What this project is. It only aims to provide a Dawn reference implementation that follows the great architecture and design of wgpu-py, from the pygfx/wgpu-py project. All credit for the API, the design and most of the code goes to its authors. This project is maintained by AI agents instead of humans: the code, the ports of new wgpu-py releases and the releases themselves are made by an agent (see Versions and releases).

It is a standalone package:

• The wheels contain Dawn (statically linked); there is nothing else to install apart from the GPU drivers of the system.
• It is co-installable with wgpu-py: it only provides the wgpudawn module.
• One wheel per platform works for all supported Python versions (abi3).

pip install wgpudawn

import wgpudawn as wgpu

adapter = wgpu.gpu.request_adapter_sync(power_preference="high-performance")
device = adapter.request_device_sync()
print(adapter.summary)

The API is documented at https://wgpu-py.readthedocs.io; replace wgpu by wgpudawn. wgpudawn.wgpu_py_version is the version of wgpu-py that this version of wgpudawn mirrors.

In the browser

The gallery runs the examples of pygfx in your browser, on wgpudawn: Pyodide, the Pyodide wheel of wgpudawn (which uses the WebGPU of the browser through Dawn's Emdawnwebgpu) and pygfx (for now with a few fixes on top, see issue 2). It needs a browser with WebGPU and JSPI, such as a recent Chrome or Edge. Every example is run in headless Chrome when the site is built; the gallery shows what works and what does not.

Status

Early. The wgpu-py tests that do not depend on wgpu-native specifics pass, and so does the unit test suite of pygfx (see below).

Differences with wgpu-py:

• Shaders are compiled by Tint, which follows the WGSL spec strictly; naga (wgpu-native) accepts some shaders that Tint rejects.
• No wgpu-native extras (wgpu.backends.wgpu_native.extras: GLSL shaders, pipeline statistics queries, multi-draw-indirect-count, ...), and no wgpu-native specific features and limits. Dawn has its own non-standard features, e.g. unorm16-texture-formats.
• Devices always have the core-features-and-limits feature.
• The backends are Vulkan (Linux, Windows), Metal (macOS), and D3D12/D3D11 (Windows). There is no OpenGL backend.
• Validation errors are raised at the call that causes them, and push_error_scope() / pop_error_scope_async(), get_compilation_info_async() and the device-lost promise are implemented.

Libraries that import wgpu

Libraries such as pygfx and rendercanvas import wgpu by name, so by default they use wgpu-py, also when wgpudawn is installed. To run them on wgpudawn, opt in before anything imports wgpu:

import wgpudawn

wgpudawn.install_as_wgpu()

import pygfx  # `import wgpu` now gives wgpudawn, in this process

After that, wgpu and its submodules are wgpudawn's (the same module objects), and wgpu.__version__ is wgpudawn.wgpu_py_version. wgpudawn never installs a wgpu module on disk, so it stays co-installable with wgpu-py.

CI runs the unit tests of pygfx this way, using tests/wgpu_shim: a test-only package named wgpu that calls install_as_wgpu(), and that takes the place of wgpu-py so that pygfx's requirement on it is satisfied. It is not part of the wgpudawn package.

Platforms

Wheels are built for:

There is also a wheel for Pyodide (Pyodide 314, i.e. Python 3.14): there, the same bindings run on the WebGPU of the browser, via Dawn's Emdawnwebgpu. The gallery above uses it; website/ builds it.

Building from source

Dawn is not downloaded or built by pip install; build it first:

python tools/build_dawn.py --prefix /path/to/dawn    # needs git, cmake, ninja, a C++20 compiler
DAWN_PREFIX=/path/to/dawn pip install -e ".[dev]"
pip install ./tests/wgpu_shim                        # optional: for the tests that use rendercanvas
pytest tests codegen

On Linux this needs the headers of X11, xcb and Wayland. tools/build_dawn_manylinux.sh does the same in the manylinux image that the wheels are built in. DAWN_PREFIX can also point to an extracted release archive of Dawn (of the release in build_cffi.py), or to a prefix with a shared libwebgpu_dawn.

How it works:

• wgpudawn/_lib is a cffi (API mode) extension. Its cdef (webgpu_cdef.h) is generated from Dawn's webgpu.h by tools/gen_cdef.py.
• wgpudawn/backends/dawn implements the API with it. It started as wgpu-py's wgpu-native backend.
• codegen/ is wgpu-py's code generator: it writes the enums, flags and structs from webgpu.idl, and checks the backend against the IDL and against Dawn's header. Run python codegen after changing either.

Versions and releases

A version has four numbers, X.Y.Z.N: X.Y.Z is the version of wgpu-py that it mirrors (same API), and N counts the releases of wgpudawn for that version, which mostly are updates of Dawn. So wgpudawn~=0.32.0 is "the API of wgpu-py 0.32.0, on the newest Dawn". (The first releases, 0.0.x, predate this scheme.)

The version comes from the git tag; there is no version number in the source. Pushing a tag builds and tests the wheels, and publishes them to PyPI. upstream.json records the versions of wgpu-py and Dawn that the code corresponds to.

Maintenance is done by AI agents, with Claude Code skills that are part of this repository:

claude "/update-dawn release"       # to the latest Dawn release, verify, release X.Y.Z.N+1
claude "/sync-upstream release"     # port a new wgpu-py release, verify, release X.Y.Z.0
claude "/update-website"            # newer pygfx on the website; check every example; deploy

Without release, they stop before tagging. See .claude/skills/.

License

BSD 2-clause, see LICENSE. wgpudawn is derived from wgpu-py (Copyright 2019-2023 Almar Klein, Korijn van Golen). The wheels include Dawn and the libraries that it is built with; see LICENSES/.