Working Around Driver Bugs: Fixing SPIR-V Assembly With Regex

21 Nov 2025

Recently, I worked around a Vulkan driver bug on my Quest 3 by writing code that throws regular expressions at SPIR-V assembly until it's in the right form to make the driver happy. Some of you might not have enjoyed reading that sentence. Those who just dislike the unfamiliar tech jargon are the lucky ones. The rest are already feeling my pain, and this first paragraph isn't even over yet. It's (horror) story time - but you might learn a little about SPIR-V along the way if you stick around. I sure did.