Freeglut, the Free OpenGL Utility Toolkit, is meant to be a free alternative to Mark Kilgard's GLUT library. Freeglut is free software, distributed under an MIT/X11 style license. You are free to use, modify, and redistribute freeglut with or without modifications (see COPYING for details).
In short, freeglut can be used by OpenGL programs to perform those tasks which would normally require platform-specific code. Tasks like creating a window, creating an OpenGL context and binding it to the window, and processing input events. Freeglut provides a concise and elegant API to handle those tasks, in a platform-independent manner, keeping the application simple and portable.
One of the main goals of freeglut, is maximum compatibility. Freeglut is both source and binary-compatible with the original GLUT, and can be used as a drop-in replacement for it. We take great care to maintain a stable API and ABI, and to introduce any new features and improvements in a way which does not compromise compatibility.
Freeglut can be used with a wide range of OpenGL implementations, from the very early OpenGL 1.0 on SGI computers, to the very latest modern OpenGL versions on current GPUs. It can be used to create a classic OpenGL context, or a versioned core profile or compatibility context. Freeglut can also be used with OpenGL ES, on desktop or mobile devices.
Currently supported platforms:
- UNIX systems with X11 or Wayland (such as GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX, etc)
- MS Windows
- macOS with XQuartz (no native Cocoa support yet)
- Android (NDK)
- BlackBerry
Consult the platform-specific readme files for details on the level of support and build instructions.
Freeglut relies on cmake (minimum 3.0.0) to generate build files for all the different supported platforms and toolchains.
See README.cmake as a starting point, as well as the other README
files for further info.
For those cases where using cmake is inconvenient, we also provide a set of
unofficial, unsupported, possibly unmaintained, but potentially useful,
alternative build files. See altbuild/README.md for details.
Patches and pull requests for bugfixes and new features are certainly welcome. Please send patches to the freeglut-developer mailing list (see CONTACT below).
Feel free to report any bugs you encounter, using the github issues system.
Older bug reports and feature requests are still reachable on:
But you are encouraged to use github issues for new ones.
Alternatively you can also send bug reports and feature requests to the freeglut-developer mailing list if you prefer. Extended discussions about new features and design issues for large contributions, are best suited to the mailing list.
FreeGLUT website: http://freeglut.sourceforge.net
FreeGLUT mailing lists:
- developer: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freeglut-developer
- bugs: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freeglut-bugs
- announce: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freeglut-announce
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