GLExt2 goes OpenSource

October 27, 2005

approximately 1 minutes to read

After a long, long time I finally found some time to release GLExt2. GLExt2 is an utility that simplifies the use of OpenGL extensions. It basically takes an extension registry in text form (at the moment, I use the registry created by GLEW) and parses it into a XML file. This XML file is then further processed using a set of templates to generate a C++ class.

Requirements

GLExt2 depends only on Python 2.4.x and wxPython 2.6.x. There are no other dependencies I’m aware of.

How to use GLExt2

First of all, you need to download (650kb ZIP) it. You might also want to get a more recent version of GLEW (you only need the GLEW source code, I bundled the extension files from GLEW 1.3). Put all GLEX extension files under /extensions. Now you’re ready to run GLExt2. GLExt2 can run in either GUI or text mode, the file you need to start is the same in both cases: glext2_app.py (don’t start the glext2_gui.py, it will exit immediately).

If you don’t specify any command line option you’ll start in full-blown GUI mode where you can click buttons and see a progress bar etc. :) Nice, but not really useful. Most people will like to use the command-line interface, which is also easier to integrate into your build process. Simply pass --gui=0 on the command line to surpress the GUI. You need also to define what will be build, use -x/--xml to generate the XML and -c/--class-header for the class headers. If you run with -c -x then GLExt2 will create the XML file first and the class second. Have fun and feel free to comment if you find it useful.

Notes

Support for GLX and GLU is not implemented. WGL support is working and tested. The class header can be built successfully with VC++ 7.1 without any special compiler switches.