Introduction

AnyGL is a generator that creates the API and headers and function loading code for OpenGL. The goal is to support the features of various versions rather than specific versions. This makes it easier to support multiple versions of OpenGL on multiple platforms, dynamically determining whether to use newer or older functionality.

• When a core feature is exposed as an extension in older versions, the undecorated name (i.e. without the ARB or EXT suffix) is used.
• Functions that aren't supported will be NULL.
• Both OpenGL and OpenGL ES are supported, allowing shared implementations for the similar portions of both APIs.

Dependencies

The following software is required to run AnyGL:

• Python
• lxml

These dependencies are only required to run AnyGL to generate the APIs. There are no requirements other than a C compiler and a platform that supports OpenGL to use the generated code. The following libraries will need to be linked:

• OpenGL
• dl when loading with EGL.
• X11 and GLX when loading with GLX.
• EGL when loading with EGL.

Usage

In order to generate the APIs, you must first ensure that the submodules are downloaded.

git submodule init
git submodule update

This pulls down the OpenGL registry repository, which is used to provide the OpenGL API information.

The AnyGL.py python script can be run to generate the AnyGL headers and sources. Once you have generated the source files, you may embed them in your project. The public interface is proved by:

• AnyGLConfig.h: Configuration for AnyGL. The #defines may be used to change which library is used to load OpenGL or override whether or not to use OpenGL ES.
• AnyGL.h: Interface for interfacing with the AnyGL library, including initialization, shutting down, and enabling debug mode if desired.
• gl.h: OpenGL header. This isncludes all of the OpenGL types and functions.
• glx.h: GLX header for X11 integration with OpenGL, including extensions.
• wgl.h: WGL header for Windows integration with OpenGL, including extensions.

When checking if a function is supported, you may use the ANYGL_SUPPORTED() macro, passing in the function name. Global variables are provided to determine what extensions are available on the current OpenGL version. For example, to check if GL_ARB_draw_indirect is supported, you can check the variable AnyGL_ARB_draw_indirect. This shouldn't be confused with the ANYGL_ARB_draw_indirect macro, is defined if AnyGL's gl.h header declared the extension as opposed to the system gl.h. (useful when combinging the system gl.h with AnyGL's gl.h)

Note: OpenGL ES 2.0 uses the GL_HALF_FLOAT_OES enum, which is a different value from GL_HALF_FLOAT, used for all other OpenGL versions, including OpenGL ES 3.0. To work around this, the AnyGL_HALF_FLOAT variable is defined, which will have the value GL_HALF_FLOAT_OES after loading OpenGL ES 2.0 and GL_HALF_FLOAT otherwise.

Using in applications

AnyGL manages loading of the OpenGL functions, but the application is responsible for management of the OpenGL contexts themselves. The flow of control within the application should be:

1. Call AnyGL_initialize() at application startup.
2. Create a context and bind it.
3. Call AnyGL_load() to load the OpenGL functions.
4. Optionally call AnyGL_setDebugEnabled() to toggle debugging. See next section for more information.
5. When the application is closed, call AnyGL_shutdown().

Debugging

When ANYGL_ENABLE_DEBUG is defined to 1 (default when NDEBUG isn't defined), the debugging feature may be enabled. Once you call AnyGL_setDebugEnabled(1) the OpenGL function pointers will be replaced with debug versions. These will check if any OpenGL occurred after the function was called, and if so will call the error function with a string version of the call, including the values of the parameters. (such as resolving enum names) By default, this will print to the console.

Note: Enabling debugging will degrade performance. Compiling in debug support also increases the final compiled binary size, so it's recommended to disable this for final release builds.

When debugging is allowed, even when it's not enabled, the callsite of each OpenGL function is recorded. This can be queried with AnyGL_getLastCallsite(), and can be useful when hooking into OpenGL's builtin debugging functionality with glDebugMessageCallback().

License

The generation code is under the Apache license. The generated C code, including the hand-written portions used with the generated code, is under the public domain.