Can you avoid querying for a texture location in OpenGL? The way I learnt to send a texture to a shader is more or less

//Use program
//Bind texture to the texture unit to its appropriate target
glActiveTexture(GL_TEXTURE0 + texture_unit);
glBindTexture(target, textureID);
//Get the uniform location in the program and attach the texture unit
GLuint location = /*get the location somewhow*/;
glUniform1i(location,texture_unit);


However when dealing with buffers and SSBOS rather than trying to find a location through a string name, the object is declared as:

layout(std430, binding = 2) buffer texture_meta_data


For example. This means that the SSBO is to be bound at binding point 2

And then on the C++ side one does something like

glBindBufferBase(GL_SHADER_STORAGE_BUFFER, 2, SSBOID);


To bind the object to the binding point.

How can you do the same with textures?
By using the exact same syntax as you did for SSBOs:

layout(binding = 0) uniform sampler2D texture_name;


This is a GL 4.2 feature, so if you can use SSBOs, you can use this.