Reflection

To write a valid .mgfx, ShadowDusk must know each shader's parameters (names, types, sizes), constant-buffer layouts, and sampler/texture bindings. That information is recovered by reflection over the compiled bytecode. There are two faithful reflection sources, one per backend.

Managed SpirvReflector (OpenGL / WebGL path)

For the OpenGL/WebGL path the shader is compiled to SPIR-V by DXC. ShadowDusk reflects that SPIR-V with a pure-managed reflector, SpirvReflector (ShadowDusk.Core/Reflection/SpirvReflector.cs, with the low-level SPIR-V parsing under Reflection/Spirv/). It extracts:

Being pure-managed, it runs anywhere .NET runs — including in the browser — with no native dependency, which is what makes the in-memory and WASM paths self-contained. It was validated as equivalent to a DXIL oracle across the corpus.

DXBC reflection (DirectX path)

For the DirectX path the shader is compiled to DXBC by vkd3d-shader or d3dcompiler_47. The same DXBC bytes are the reflection source, parsed by the pure-managed RdefReader (the DXBC container's RDEF/ISGN/OSGN chunks) — platform-agnostic, and proven deeply equal to the Windows D3DReflect oracle for both backends' output. A DxbcReflectionExtractor wraps it so both DXBC backends produce the same parameter/cbuffer/sampler metadata on every OS.

The shared contract

Both reflectors produce the same managed shape — a ReflectedEffect of ParameterReflection, ConstantBufferReflection, SamplerReflection, and TextureReflection — behind the IShaderReflector abstraction (ShadowDusk.Core/Reflection/IShaderReflector.cs). The MGFX writer consumes that contract, so the writer is backend-agnostic: the same writer emits a structurally compatible .mgfx whether the blob inside is GLSL text (OpenGL) or DXBC bytecode (DirectX).

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