GLFW on OS X starting guide

ogl_osx.md

OpenGL Development on OS X

While it's possible to download packages and install them manually, it's such a hassle. Fortunately for us, OS X has an unofficial package manager called http://brew.sh Let's install it. Open you Terminal and paste the following code:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Great. Homebrew will automatically install packages to /usr/local. Conveniently, that directory is already in your include and link paths.

Now, some bad news. Freeglut will not run properly on OS X. It attempts to run through the X-Windows server. Unfortunately for us, X11/XQuartz (the X-Windows emulations on OS X) will not support an OpenGL context past OpenGL 1.3. So we will have to use a newer library, called GLFW. Let's install that now.

In Terminal:

brew install glfw

GLFW3 should now be installed. Here's a substitute tutorial file with GLFW instead of freeglut.

/* Ask for an OpenGL Core Context */
#define GLFW_INCLUDE_GLCOREARB
#include <GLFW/glfw3.h>

#define BUFFER_OFFSET(i) ((char *)NULL + (i))

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  GLFWwindow* window;

  /* Initialize the library */
  if ( !glfwInit() )
  {
     return -1;
  }

#ifdef __APPLE__
  /* We need to explicitly ask for a 3.2 context on OS X */
  glfwWindowHint (GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MAJOR, 3);
  glfwWindowHint (GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MINOR, 2);
  glfwWindowHint (GLFW_OPENGL_FORWARD_COMPAT, GL_TRUE);
  glfwWindowHint (GLFW_OPENGL_PROFILE, GLFW_OPENGL_CORE_PROFILE);
#endif

  /* Create a windowed mode window and its OpenGL context */
  window = glfwCreateWindow( 1280, 720, "Hello World", NULL, NULL );
  if (!window)
  {
     glfwTerminate();
     return -1;
  }

  /* Make the window's context current */
  glfwMakeContextCurrent(window);

  /* Loop until the user closes the window */
  while (!glfwWindowShouldClose(window))
  {
    /* Render here */
    glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT); // Clear the buffers

    /* Swap front and back buffers */
    glfwSwapBuffers(window);

    /* Poll for and process events */
    glfwPollEvents();
  }

  glfwTerminate();
  return 0;
}

Now we need to compile this code. GLFW needs to link against several OS X library. Here's the compiler invokation to compile this code sample properly.

clang++ -std=c++11 -stdlib=libc++ -lglfw3 -framework CoreVideo -framework OpenGL -framework IOKit -framework Cocoa -framework Carbon </path/to/cpp/file>

You can run the resulting file by typing ./a.out

Congratulations! You've completed your first OS X OpenGL project.

I need to remove all of the glfwWindowHint(...) lines in order to actually render something on canvas. Any idea why this happens? I've tried 4.1 as well nothing changed

All of the tutorials I've found also includes the exact same lines. I'm confused

Update found it:
I specified a very old version of GLSL (1.0) in shader definitions. That was the problem

Worked on M1 Mac on Big Sur!!!

thanks.

https://youtu.be/MHlbNbWlrIM I made a video about it!

Thanks for this! I was able to compile and run this on macOS 12.0.1 with no problems and no changes. It also helped me get an example running using Silk.NET's GLFW bindings.

try replacing -lglfw3 with -lglfw (you can check if the library is actually installed with ls /usr/local/lib)

It works. Thank you!

here's another video that worked for me in VS Code (video has C code, but if you call clang++ instead of clang it works for C++)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AHq0jTrypw&ab_channel=LuTheCoder

This doesn't work for me. The library is installed to /opt/homebrew/Cellar/glfw.

This solved the issue for me: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/67373307/macos-m1-fatal-error-glfw-glfw3-h-file-not-found

YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!
thank you kind sir :)