Loading GLSL shader without using any Apple APIs - ios

Question

What is a good way to load a GLSL shader using C/C++ without using Objective-C or any Apple APIs?
I am currently using the following method, which is from the iPhone 3D Programming book, but it says that it is not recommended for production code:
Simple.vsh
const char* SimpleVertexShader = STRINGIFY
(
// Shader code...
);
RenderingEngine.cpp
#define STRINGIFY(A) #A
#include "Simple.vsh"
// ...
glShaderSource( shaderHandle, 1, &SimpleVertexShader, 0 );

Answer 1

If you want to load your shaders from files in your app bundle, you can get the file paths using the NSBundle object (in Objective-C), or using the CoreFoundation CFBundle object (in pure C).
Either way, you are using Apple-specific APIs. The only thing you're getting by using CFBundle instead of NSBundle is more boilerplate code.
If you don't want to use any Apple APIs, then your options are to embed your shaders as literal strings, or connect to a server on the Internet and download them (using the Unix socket API).
What you really need to do is define an interface by which your RenderingEngine gets the source code for its shaders, and implement that interface using the appropriate platform-specific API on each platform to which your port the RenderingEngine. The interface can be something super simple like this:
RenderingEngineShaderSourceInterface.h
#ifdef __cplusplus
extern "C" {
#endif
// You are responsible for freeing the C string that this function returns.
extern char const *RenderingEngine_shaderSourceForName(char const *name);
#ifdef __cplusplus
}
#endif
Then you create RenderingEngineShaderSource_Windows.cpp, RenderingEngineShaderSource_iOS.m, RenderingEngineShaderSource_Linux.cpp, etc. Each one implements RenderingEngine_shaderSourceForName using the appropriate API for that platform.

Answer 2

I use one of two methods. If it's a short shader, I may just put it code:
const char shader[] =
"uniform vec4 blah;\n" // Note, no semicolon here - it does the right thing
"main ()\n"
"{\n"
...rest of code
"}\n";
Or, if it's longer or going to be re-used in other places, I'll put it into a text file in the resources and read the text file at run time. You can get to it via [NSBundle pathForResource:ofType:].

Answer 3

Consider a C++ raw string literal; no STRINGIFY is needed since the newer features of C++ allow you to do similar things without macro.
I'd retype a good example but here is one.