linc/OpenGL

Haxe/hxcpp @:native bindings for OpenGL

This is a linc library.

Install

haxelib git linc_opengl https://github.com/snowkit/linc_opengl.git

License

See LICENSE.md

What does this library do exactly

This library is specifically about access.

Does do

Gives you access to OpenGL API's from Haxe code
Gives you access to GLEW API from Haxe code

Doesn't do

Handle any form of windowing or GL context creation
Anything else, really.

This means you'd probably want to create a window, and an OpenGL context, before calling any of these functions. For example, you could do so with linc_sdl. (Some examples of this will be added soon)

Available API's
The library has two imports, which behave slightly different for platform consistency reasons. The two API's are "Desktop GL" from version 1.1 through 4.5 and a WebGL spec based API for portability.

GLEW dependency

Currently on desktop platforms GLEW is imported as the OpenGL header. For now, there are no flags or ways to avoid its use - I plan to solve that in future. GLEW is pretty prevalant, does solve many annoyances and issues, and is a decent option as far as general GL wrangling goes.

Because of the dependency, on desktop platforms, you have to initialize GLEW yourself under the same conditions as you would when using GLEW and GL normally. Typically you do this after creating the GL context - see below. Take note that I say desktop: you will probably run into issues with GLEW on mobile platforms, so shield your code with #if accordingly.

For simplicity, import glew.GLEW; is provided, with the full GLEW API. If you want to use it outside of linc_opengl for some reason there is also linc_glew available.

var res = GLEW.init();
if(res != GLEW.OK) {
    throw 'Failed to initialize GLEW! ' + GLEW.error(res);
} else {
    trace('GLEW init went ok!');
}

GL 1.1 - GL 4.6 API

About

The opengl.GL API is the entirety of the OpenGL API and extensions as defined by GLEW. What that means is that the API is automatically generated from glew.h, so everything glew defines is available as a Haxe API.

Usage

The usage pattern here is for consistency with C++ and similar code. This import pattern below makes many OpenGL examples around able to be copy pasted from C++ tutorials with only minor changes.

The default GL.hx includes bindings for a OpenGL 4.6 core profile. If you want a different profile, or non core functions you will need to generate your own bindings. This can be easily done by running haxe --run Main [ args ] in the gen directory. The arguments to pass are provided below.

arg0 - api type - OpenGL api type to build for. 'gl', 'gles1', 'gles2' arg1 - major - Major version to request. arg2 - minor - Minor version to request. arg3 - profile - profile to request. 'core', 'compatibility'. Not required for gles, defaults to compatibility. args - extensions - Any other args are assumed to be GL extension names. These extensions will be included in the produced externs.

e.g. haxe --run Main gl 4 4 core GL_ARB_direct_state_access GL_ARB_sparse_texture

Import

Use import opengl.GL.*; because the * will import all of the GL types and functions as if they were in the same scope - much like in C++.

Then, the API calls match C++ pretty closely:

glClearColor(1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0);
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);

You can still use GL. to invoke code completion, it's just slightly more awkward seeing GL.glClear.

Testing

It's important to understand that writing a test for every one of these functions is not even possible as some extensions are highly vendor/hardware specific, or no longer available in practice.

Many endpoints are a part of a whole, and require the whole to test them for validation. The majority of these we will get to.

In practice right now, there might be a few functions that aren't correctly mapped to the right usage pattern. For example - a GL function expecting an array of floats: the generator could misidentify this as a byte array, and generate byte array usage for the Haxe API. The only solution to this is manually check every single one (which we'll do over time I'm sure) or to just stumble into them while trying to use the library.

I have tested numerous fixed function and core profile tests from various sources while creating the library, and will create tests within this library over time for to mitigate this. I'll continually be using the library extensively in practice in luxe/snow, so chances are good this won't really be a problem for the majority of API, rather on more infrequently accessed APIs.

Fixing these issues is very easy, finding them in a sea of 1000's of functions is not. The generator has a place to account for nuance like this, soon as you identify one, report it, and we'll weed them out over time.

WebGL API

About

The WebGL.hx class contains a 1:1 mapping for the WebGL 1.0 specification. This means that you can write code for the WebGL API that runs on regular OpenGL under the hood, allowing portability and consistency (for example, the API is used on Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, alongside WebGL externs for this reason).

This is convenient when you want consistency at an ES 2.0/WebGL level, as a baseline, while still having access to higher versioned desktop API's on the platforms where it makes sense.

Usage

The usage pattern here matches the WebGL API, except that the functions/values are static members on a GL class, rather than local members of a gl instance. Here's a clearer example:

Common WebGL js code:

gl.clear(gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT)

linc OpenGL WebGL API:

GL.clear(GL.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT)