Glossary of WGSL Importing terms

• WESL: The extended WGSL language, and is pronounced like “weasel”. Stands for WGSL Extended Shading Language
• WESL translator: a program that implements the WESL specification and converts WESL source code to WGSL
• Importable item
  • Structs
  • Functions
  • Type aliases
  • Const declarations, override declarations
  • Var declarations
• Module: A single WESL file
• Root Module: A WESL module from which compilation starts. A single project can have many root modules.
• Module Path: Hierarchical address of a module file or partial path, akin to a filesystem path
• Side effects: WGSL code that can affect other modules when imported
  • Things that are specified when creating a WGSL pipeline
    • Shader entry-points
    • Pipeline-overridable constants
    • Global variables, including bindings
  • Directives: Generated WGSL code must agree on a set of directives
  • (Maybe const_assert?)
• Package: A publishable body of WESL code containing multiple files. Akin to a JavaScript npm package or a Rust crate.
• Package Root: The root directory of WESL files
• Visibility: Whether a importable item is visible to
  • other modules
  • other packages