3 By Jean-Seb on Friday July 10, 2009, 00:18
4 Translated by Babelfish with a scrub from John F. Fay. For points of confusion
5 please refer to the original French version.
7 Freeglut is an open-source evolution of GLUT.
8 Under Windows, one can use it with Cygwin.
9 Easy? Yes, if one agrees to distribute "cygwin1.dll".
10 Let us help freeglut gain its independence !
11 Update 10/7/2009: generation of a library for linking without the DLL.
16 * Download the sources for version 2.6.0 which integrates recent changes.
17 * Using version 2.6 is better than the 2.4-stable branch because many
18 bugs have been corrected.
19 * You will find the sources on the site of Freeglut:
20 o http://freeglut.sourceforge.net/
25 * We will create a DLL for Cygwin, and an independent static library
26 * We will also create a dynamic library, allowing linking with the DLL.
29 List of generated files
31 * freeglut.dll: a traditional DLL for the dynamic linkage.
32 * libfreeglut.a: the static library. The final program is autonomous (at
34 * libfreeglutdll.a: the dynamic library. The final program needs
40 * Extract the files from the freeglut archive.
41 * Go in the directory src (located at the root of the Freeglut directory),
42 and create a "Gl" sub-directory
43 o In this sub-directory, copy the files of the directory "include/Gl"
45 * Why is it necessary to create a "Gl" directory for compilation?
46 o I needed it to simplify things during my tests.
47 o If not you can create the repertories directly, and copy the files
48 as indicated in the point installation (see below).
50 * Do a little housekeeping in /lib:
51 o Erase all the references to the glut, so as not to conflict with the
53 o This stage is optional, you can also choose to do the housekeeping
54 only after a successful compilation of Freeglut.
55 o In your enthusiasm to clean things up, be careful not to erase the
56 library glu32.lib (not to be confused with glut32.lib).
61 * Forget the "./configure, make, make install" triptych.
62 o It does not go at all with Cygwin.
64 * Here Makefile which will make the deal:
66 #Makefile for Freeglut 2.6.0-rc and Cygwin
67 #To place in the directory 'src/Common'
69 sources=$ (wildcard *.c)
70 objs=$ (sources: .c=.o)
74 CFLAGS=-O2 - DTARGET_HOST_MS_WINDOWS - DX_DISPLAY_MISSING - DFREEGLUT_STATIC - I./
75 LDFLAGS=-lopengl32 - lgdi32 - lwinmm
77 nocyg=-mno-cygwin - mwindows
80 #construction DLL related to cygwin1.dll
81 gcc $(nocyg) $(objs) -shared $(LDFLAGS) -o $(libname).dll
82 nm $(libname).dll | awk 'BEGIN { print "EXPORTS" } /T _glut/ {sub( /^.*T _/, "\t"); print}' > $(libname).def
83 dlltool --dllname $(libname).dll --input-def $(libname).def --output-lib lib$(libname)dll.a
85 #construction static library independent of cygwin
86 ar cr lib$(libname).a $(objs)
87 #pas inevitably obligatory (creation of an index to accelerate the accesses)
88 ranlib lib$(libname).a
91 gcc $(nocyg) -c $(CFLAGS) $<
94 rm -f *.o $(libname).dll $(libname).def lib$(libname)dll.a lib$(libname).a
99 Some remarks on the Makefile
101 * This makefile creates a DLL, a static library (a file, in other words) and
102 the dynamic library which will allow the use of the DLL.
104 * Do not try to strip the static library! You may not be able to compile
105 applications with static library any more.
106 o On the other hand, you can strip the final executable obtained after
107 compiling your application.
109 * I chose to call the DLL and the libraries by their "true names":
110 freeglut.dll libfreeglutdll.a and libfreeglut.a.
111 o Script configures recreated (for reasons of compatibility with the
112 old GLUT library) glut.dll and libglut.a.
113 o During the my tests, I had conflicts with an authentic "glut" which
114 trailed in my "/lib". I decided to call the things by their name, in
115 order to avoid confusions.
116 o Nothing prevents you from renaming the DLL, if you need to use GLUT
117 programs which you cannot recompile.
119 * The dynamic library is generated starting from the DLL.
120 o For reasons of brevity, I used awk. It generates the export file
122 o The only notable thing is the selection of the functions whose name
123 starts with _glut, in order to avoid including in the dynamic
124 library the functions that are not related to freeglut.
125 o then, one uses dlltool in a very traditional way.
127 nm $(libname).dll | awk 'BEGIN { print "EXPORTS" } /T _glut/ {sub( /^.*T _/, "\t"); print}' > $(libname).def
128 dlltool --dllname $(libname).dll --input-def $(libname).def --output-lib lib$(libname)dll.a
135 * Copy libfreeglut.a, libfreeglutdll.a into the Cygwin directory /lib.
136 * Copy freglut.dll in the system32 of Windows (this is practical, but not
138 * Copy the files headers of Freeglut (/include/gl) into the Cygwin directory
140 * Copy the files headers (always /include/gl) into /usr/include/mingw/Gl:
141 this is used for compilations with the flag - mno-cygwin, which uses the
143 o You may need to erase the old GLUT include files if you installed it
149 * We will test with the program shapes, found in progs/demonstrations/shapes
150 o -mno-cygwin is used to force the use of Mingw without the large
151 dependence cygwin1.dll.
152 o -mwindows is only used to remove the horrible Shell window (very
153 useful for the settling, on the other hand).
154 o -L. (note the period after the "L"): I left libfreeglut.a,
155 libfreeglutdll.a and freeglut.dll in the test directory, at the time
159 Compilation of the static freeglut library, without cygwin
161 * All the simplicity lies in the define: -DFREEGLUT_STATIC
162 o It serves to obtain good decoration of the function names in the
163 imports of the lib Freeglut.
164 o You can test without and use a hex editor to see the differences
166 * attention with the order of the libraries: -lfreeglut (static) must be
167 before the declaration of the dynamic libraries.
169 * gcc shapes.c -L. -lfreeglut -lopengl32 -lwinmm -lgdi32 -mno-cygwin -mwindows -DFREEGLUT_STATIC
172 Compilation with DLL freeglut, without cygwin
174 * For the define, see the notices above
175 * The order of the libraries is no longer important.
177 * gcc shapes.c -L. -lopengl32 -lwinmm -lgdi32 -lfreeglut -mno-cygwin -DFREEGLUT_STATIC
180 Compilation with DLL freeglut, Cygwin
182 * This example is given only for reference, the topic of this ticket being
183 to get rid of Cygwin.
184 o Let us say that can be used to make the point (and later).
186 * gcc shapes.c -L. -lopengl32 -lwinmm -lgdi32 -lfreeglut
190 Where are the dooooocs?
192 * Freeglut is delivered with its documentation, more very up to date.
193 o It seems that there is a problem with the original GLUT
194 documentation. Not only it does not correspond completely to the
195 operation of Freeglut, but moreover, its author (Mark Kilgard)
196 copyrighted it. Its distribution is thus difficult.
198 * Jocelyn Fréchot undertook a levelling of the docs for version 2.6.0. One can find them on his site for the moment:
199 o http://jocelyn.frechot.free.fr/freeglut/
202 Something survived...
204 * I also tested the recompiling of the demonstrations of the original lib
205 GLUT (peace with its ashes).
206 o Nothing in particular to be announced.
208 * Thank you with all the courageous maintainers for Freeglut, that one
209 believed dead, but which still move.