opengl Getting started with opengl Setup Modern OpenGL 4.1 on macOS (Xcode, GLFW and GLEW)

Example

1. Install GLFW

First step is to create an OpenGL window. GLFW is an Open Source, multi-platform library for creating windows with OpenGL, to install GLFW first download its files from www.glfw.org

Extract the GLFW folder and its contents will look like this

Download and install CMake to build GLFW. Goto www.cmake.org/download/, download CMake and install for MAC OS X

If Xcode is not installed. Download and install Xcode from Mac App Store.

Create a new folder Build inside the GLFW folder

Open CMake, click on Browse Source button to select the GLFW folder (make sure that CMakeLists.txt) is located inside that folder. After that, click on Browse Build button and select the newly created Build folder in previous step.

Now Click on Configure button and select Xcode as generator with Use default native compilers option, and click Done.

Tick on BUILD_SHARED_LIBS option and then click on Configure button again and finally click Generate button.

After generation CMake should look like this

Now Open Finder and goto /usr, create a folder name local if not already there. Open the local folder and create two folders include and lib if not already there.

Now open the GLFW folder and goto Build (where CMake had built the files). Open GLFW.xcodeproj file in Xcode.

Select install > My Mac and then click on run (Play shaped button).

It is now successfully installed (ignore the warnings).

To make sure Open Finder and goto /usr/local/lib folder and three GLFW library files will be already present there (If not then open Build folder inside GLFW folder and go to src/Debug copy all files to /usr/local/lib)

Open Finder and goto /usr/local/include and a GLFW folder will be already present there with two header files inside it by name of glfw3.h and glfw3native.h

2. Install GLEW

GLEW is a cross-platform library that helps in querying and loading OpenGL extensions. It provides run-time mechanisms for determining which OpenGL extensions are supported on the target platform. It is only for modern OpenGL (OpenGL version 3.2 and greater which requires functions to be determined at runtime). To install first download its files from glew.sourceforge.net

Extract the GLFW folder and its contents will look like this.

Now open Terminal, navigate to GLEW Folder and type the following commands

make
sudo make install 
make clean

Now GLEW is successfully installed. To make sure its installed, Open Finder, go to /usr/local/include and a GL folder will be already present there with three header files inside it by name of glew.h, glxew.h and wglew.h

Open Finder and go to /usr/local/lib and GLEW library files will be already present there

3. Test and Run

Now we have successfully installed GLFW and GLEW. Its time to code. Open Xcode and create a new Xcode project. Select Command Line Tool then proceed next and select C++ as language.

Xcode will create a new command line project.

Click on project name, and under Build Settings tab switch from Basic to All, under Search Paths section, add /usr/local/include in Header Search Paths and add /usr/local/lib in Library Search Paths

Click on project name, and under Build Phases tab and under Link With Binary Libraries add OpenGL.framework and also add recently created GLFW and GLEW libraries from /usr/local/lib

Now we are ready to code in Modern Open GL 4.1 on macOS using C++ and Xcode. The following code will create an OpenGL Window using GLFW with Blank Screen Output.

#include <GL/glew.h> 
#include <GLFW/glfw3.h>

// Define main function
int main() 
{
    // Initialize GLFW
    glfwInit();

    // Define version and compatibility settings
    glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MAJOR, 3);
    glfwWindowHint(GLFW_CONTEXT_VERSION_MINOR, 2); 
    glfwWindowHint(GLFW_OPENGL_PROFILE,GLFW_OPENGL_CORE_PROFILE);
    glfwWindowHint(GLFW_OPENGL_FORWARD_COMPAT, GL_TRUE); 
    glfwWindowHint(GLFW_RESIZABLE, GL_FALSE);

    // Create OpenGL window and context
    GLFWwindow* window = glfwCreateWindow(800, 600, "OpenGL", NULL, NULL);
    glfwMakeContextCurrent(window);

    // Check for window creation failure
    if (!window) 
    {
        // Terminate GLFW
        glfwTerminate();
        return 0; 
    }

    // Initialize GLEW
    glewExperimental = GL_TRUE; glewInit();

    // Event loop
    while(!glfwWindowShouldClose(window)) 
    {
        // Clear the screen to black
        glClearColor(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 1.0f); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
        glfwSwapBuffers(window);
        glfwPollEvents(); 
    }

    // Terminate GLFW
    glfwTerminate(); return 0;
}