How to find OpenGL library?
 

Hello.

I recently installed Slackware 11 on a backup computer to compile and test portable versions of my programs on. Unfortunately, I can't get gcc (3.4.6) to recognize my OpenGL commands - probably because I'm having severe problems finding the effing OpenGL library file.

I've grepped the entire FS for countless permutations of opengl and have found nothing that looks like a library file. So I'm wondering, what are the equivalents to OpenGL32.lib and glu32.lib on this platform?

Using Mesa-6.5 to provide OpenGL libraries (there are other sources of OpenGL libraries), the following are installed libGL.so, libGLU.so, libGLw.so, libglut.so. They are most likely going to be in /usr or /usr/X11R6. I don't recall off the top of my head whether they are installed straight into $PREFIX/lib or into $PREFIX/lib/GL.

Okie, thanks.

Does it matter where I get my GL libs from? In Windows, the required GL libs are always part of the compiler, so I haven't had cause to care about it before.

OpenGL is a specification, so any library that satisfies compliance requirements with the specification (and pays a fee to SGI) is an OpenGL library. Mesa3d is probably the most common open source implementation of the OpenGL specification. However, Mesa doesn't pay the fee (AFAIK) so they can't officially call their implementation OpenGL. Both nVidia and ATI provide free, but closed-source, OpenGL libraries that are optimized for their specific GPU.

It seems I've got libGL.so, but not libGLU.so.

As far as I understand, Mesa3D is an implementation of OpenGL that runs everything in software. Is that right? Because if so, I need to find another source since I want hardware acceleration.

I've tried Nvidias homepage since I'm using Nvidia-based hardware. No luck. I've tried googling for the files, but mostly get broken links or references to Mesa. Finding a simple lib file turns out to be more difficult than I ever imagined it could be.

So can anyone point me to a nice download of a complete, hardware accelerated implementation of OpenGL that I can use with gcc/g++? Please?

nVidia -> http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html