- Introduction
- freeglut MinGW Build
- Building the Library
- Testing the Library
- Terms of Use
- Problems?
- Changelog
(taken from the freeglut web site)
FreeGLUT is a free-software/open-source alternative to the OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) library. GLUT was originally written by Mark Kilgard to support the sample programs in the second edition OpenGL 'RedBook'. Since then, GLUT has been used in a wide variety of practical applications because it is simple, widely available and highly portable.
GLUT (and hence FreeGLUT) takes care of all the system-specific chores required for creating windows, initializing OpenGL contexts, and handling input events, to allow for trully portable OpenGL programs.
freeglut MinGW is a repackaging of the freeglut source code. It removes the non-Windows source code and adds a Makefile which can be used to build freeglut with MinGW. The reason for this is because Transmission Zero produces freeglut Windows Development Libraries for MinGW and MSVC. It was considered important for those two packages to be binary compatible with each other, and also with the original GLUT for Win32. The Makefile pulls off a few tricks to make this happen (see Advanced MinGW DLL Topics ).
There are no functional changes from the official freeglut release, but the resource script has been modified to identify the DLL as the Transmission Zero MinGW build. Therefore you can assume that (e.g.) freeglut MinGW v3.0.0-1.tz functions exactly the same as freeglut v3.0.0.
Note that this source release is not an official release, and is not endorsed by the freeglut project. For official source releases, please visit the downloads section of the freeglut web site.
To build the application from the command line with the MinGW C compiler, open a command prompt, change to the directory containing the Makefile, and run "mingw32-make". This will produce the freeglut DLL in the "bin" directory, and the import and static libraries in the "lib" directory. Additionally, you will need the contents of the "include" directory (include the "GL" directory as-is, don't try to flatten it).
You can build both x86 and x64 versions of freeglut from the Makefile. The undecorated stdcall workaround is actually an unnecessary step in a 64 bit build, as x64 functions are neither decorated nor stdcall. You could modify the Makefile to produce the x64 DLL and import library in a single step and remove the stdcall workaround. However, apart from wasting a few CPU cycles, the workaround is harmless to the 64 bit build, and leaving it there ensures both 32 bit and 64 bit builds are correct.
You can also cross-compile freeglut, e.g. by using MinGW on the Fedora Linux distribution. Some small tweaks will likely be needed in the Makefile to do this.
To test the library, you can build the Hello GLUT application.
FreeGLUT is released under the X-Consortium license. Refer to "License.txt" for terms of use.
If you have any problems or questions, please ensure you have read this readme file and the Using freeglut or GLUT with MinGW article. If you are still having trouble, you can get in contact.
- 2016-08-29: Version 3.0.0-1.tz
- Initial public source release.
Transmission Zero 2016-08-29