Generate CMake distribution in CD

[eliemichel]

Hello,

I am trying to make the integration of the precompiled binaries in a CMake-based project as easy and portable as possible for my WebGPU C++ guide and I came up with a solution that satisfies me:

• Easy to integrate, with a webgpu CMake target to link like any library and that manages the pre-compiled binaries
• Define a WEBGPU_BACKEND_WGPU to distinguish this distribution for the Dawn-based alternative that I also provide
• Follow modern idioms of CMake
• Works with emscripten

Currently I point my readers to my WebGPU-distribution repository but I think this is something that would be worth making available directly in the release of wgpu-native.

This PR adds to the CD process the generation of a distribution of WebGPU that can be simply copied in a CMake project and integrated with add_subdirectory(webgpu). More info to be found in distribution/REAMD.md.

This is something that I am going to also discuss with Dawn so that ideally we end up with a common way of packaging binaries for CMake. I'll be happy to discuss the details and adapt to as many use cases as possible!

[almarklein]

Thanks! This sounds like it would be useful, but (being mostly a Python dev) I cannot judge whether this approach is good practice or something like that.

[almarklein]

missed a spot :)

[eliemichel]

Oh thanks my bad!

[almarklein]

This is open for a while even though this is about finished. I think this needs a round of review from someone with more experience (than me) in build systems. cc @rajveermalviya

[waywardmonkeys]

Is there something I can do to help push this along?

[waywardmonkeys]

@rajveermalviya Any chance I can help get this wrapped up for the next release?

[rajveermalviya]

(Apologies for missing this)

Tbh instead of this, I would prefer a setup where user can clone the repo (or github's download zip) to a directory and then import that directory via add_subdirectory.

Then the CMakeLists.txt at the root in this repo could the have an option like DOWNLOAD_PREBUILT_BINARIES, where default would be false. So, the binaries would be built from source by default & if that option is enabled then the binaries would be downloaded from Github Releases. Such a setup would also allow us to mirror cargo optional features that are currently disabled in the release packages.

But not really sure how emscripten would fit in that.

[eliemichel]

I agree actually, not my topmost priority at the moment but I'll work on this eventually!

[waywardmonkeys]

wasmtime does something similar as well. I have it on my list to try to get to this sooner rather than later.

[waywardmonkeys]

I have a working prototype of this locally now. I'll need #359 to land and then I can start on a series of PRs that get us to (what I hope is) a good place.

[cwfitzgerald]

We definitely still want this, but we dropped the ball on reviews. I'm going to close this, we definitely want integration with cmake somehow.