Dawn Native for macOS (Pre-built)

This repository contains a pre-built static library of Google's Dawn Native for macOS (universal binary supporting both x86_64 and arm64 architectures).

Version

Built from Dawn Native version v20250618.223156

What is Dawn Native?

Dawn Native is Google's cross-platform implementation of the WebGPU standard, providing native access to modern graphics APIs like Metal, Vulkan, and D3D12.

Build Process

This library was built using the following steps:

cp scripts/standalone.gclient .gclient
gclient sync
cmake -G Ninja \
  -S . -B out/macos-universal \
  -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF \
  -DDAWN_FETCH_DEPENDENCIES=ON \
  -DDAWN_ENABLE_INSTALL=ON \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="x86_64;arm64"
cmake --build out/macos-universal --config Release

The individual static libraries were then merged into a single dawn.a file using libtool.

Usage

To use this pre-built library in your Zig project, add it as a dependency and link the static library:

if (example_project.rootModuleTarget().os.tag == .macos) {
    const dawn_darwin = b.dependency("dawn_darwin", .{});
    example_project.addObjectFile(dawn_darwin.path("dawn.a"));
}

Replace example_project with your actual project variable name.

Example

The Zignite repository features a full example of how to use this. https://github.com/Thomvanoorschot/zignite