volk/volk.h include not found

[tksuoran]

My system: Windows 11
Git commit: 3a2cafe 2026-01-03 17:49:20 Sascha Willems (HEAD -> main, origin/main, origin/HEAD) Reword uniform buffers to shader data buffers Fixes #5

Repro steps:

• Open Developer Command Prompt for VS 18
• git clone https://github.com/SaschaWillems/HowToVulkan.git
• cd HowToVulkan\source
• cmake -Bbuild -S.
• devenv build\HowToVulkan.slnx
• Hit F5

Expected result:

• Build succeeds

Actual result:

7>D:\HowToVulkan\source\main.cpp(8,10): error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'volk/volk.h': No such file or directory

[SaschaWillems]

Volk (and other dependencies) are included via the Vulkan SDK. Is this installed?

[tksuoran]

D:\HowToVulkan\source>cmake -Bbuild -S.
-- Building for: Visual Studio 18 2026
-- The C compiler identification is MSVC 19.50.35721.0
-- The CXX compiler identification is MSVC 19.50.35721.0
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Check for working C compiler: C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/18/Community/VC/Tools/MSVC/14.50.35717/bin/Hostx64/x64/cl.exe - skipped
-- Detecting C compile features
-- Detecting C compile features - done
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: C:/Program Files/Microsoft Visual Studio/18/Community/VC/Tools/MSVC/14.50.35717/bin/Hostx64/x64/cl.exe - skipped
-- Detecting CXX compile features
-- Detecting CXX compile features - done
-- Found Vulkan SDK in C:\VulkanSDK\1.4.328.1

...

[tksuoran]

Having Vulkan SDK installed is not a guarantee that extra libraries are installed. I prefer to use CPM / CMake FetchContent, and thus I believe I have chosen not to include extra libraries when installing Vulkan SDK.

[tksuoran]

I do this myself:

CPMAddPackage(
    NAME              Vulkan-Headers
    GIT_TAG           vulkan-sdk-1.4.335.0
    GIT_SHALLOW       TRUE
    GITHUB_REPOSITORY KhronosGroup/Vulkan-Headers
)
CPMAddPackage(
    NAME              VulkanMemoryAllocator
    VERSION           3.3.0
    GIT_SHALLOW       TRUE
    GITHUB_REPOSITORY GPUOpen-LibrariesAndSDKs/VulkanMemoryAllocator
)
CPMAddPackage(
    NAME              volk
    GIT_TAG           vulkan-sdk-1.4.335.0
    GIT_SHALLOW       TRUE
    GITHUB_REPOSITORY zeux/volk
)

[SaschaWillems]

Afaik you have to explicitly untick those boxes (for Volk, VMA, etc.) in recent SDKs. So I'm fine with how it works right now.

[tksuoran]

The situation could be improved by adding check for each library in CMakeLists.txt. Reporting error during cmake configure and suggesting user to reinstall Vulkan SDK with the checkboxes enabled could be helpful.

[mpalomas]

By the way, on Linux, you don´t get to choose/select components of the SDK: it's just a archive.
And for instance, the very latest one is missing GLM, so that's really inconvenient. Maybe that's a SDK bug?

[SaschaWillems]

That is indeed a bug in the SDK and will be fixed for the next version.

[tksuoran]

Afaik you have to explicitly untick those boxes (for Volk, VMA, etc.) in recent SDKs. So I'm fine with how it works right now.

I just installed Vulkan SDK for the first time on new machine:

The optional parts in the screenshot were not ticked by default.

[radgeRayden]

I'm trying to build on linux and it's failing to find volk, despite me downloading the SDK and pointing cmake to it. It certainly looks like it's there.

EDIT: looking at flags.make inside the HowToVulkan.dir, I see this: CXX_INCLUDES = -I/home/radge/Workshop/HowToVulkan/source/1.4.341.1/include which is missing the x86_64 bit before include. After editing a few paths in flags.make and link.txt I was able to build it.

[SaschaWillems]

How did you set up the SDK? The CMake setup tries to locate it via the VULKAN_SDK environment variable. What does it point to?

[radgeRayden]

How did you set up the SDK? The CMake setup tries to locate it via the VULKAN_SDK environment variable. What does it point to?

The VULKAN_SDK variable is pointing to /home/radge/Workshop/HowToVulkan/source/1.4.341.1/. That folder is a direct extraction of the SDK tarball from lunarg.