I am implementing an early depth pass. Is there an easy way to enable/disable depth and color writing, or do I have to create a whole new renderpass, graphics pipeline, framebuffers, etc.?
I think creating new Pipeline should be sufficient. (You would do so anyway, because you probably need different shaders, textures, and stuff, after the depth pass).
Depth prepass sounds like something that could\should be done in Subpass. Therefore single Render Pass could suffice.
PS: For stuff that can be set without new Pipeline see VkDynamicState
Okay, I got it worked out using subpasses. That was easier than I expected.