glsl with mingw

GLSL Installation on windows vista (32bit)

This installation direction is for installing opengl shading language with windows vista using mingw


opengl support for vista

1)download the current drivers for your graphics card from www.support.dell.com, to fully use the hardware acceleration of your graphics card.

2)check in c:/windows/system32/ for opengl32.dll, glut32.dll. They will be automatically installed in vista. If not, install the driver from support.dell.com.

mingw installation

3)install mingw (if u dont want to go through the trouble of visual studio usage, or you are comfortable with command line usage, like me :) ) from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435 (automated mingw installer). run the file, and it will do the work for you.

4)from the same url, install mingw utilities. it has reimp command which is used to convert *.lib files to *.a files. tar.gz files can be extracted in windows using a freeware 7-zip which could be installed from http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/1072

glut installation

5)http://mywebpage.netscape.com/PtrPck/glut.htm install glut from this page, and use reimp to convert glut32.lib to libglut32.a.
Command: /mingw-utils/bin>> reimp.exe glut32.lib
copy this libglut32.a file to mingw/lib directory, and replace the old libglu32.a file. The old files gives out some "undefined reference to `__glutInitWithExit@12'" errors, which the new file eliminates.Copy the dll file to c:\windows\system32 and .h files from GL/ to c:/mingw/include/GL/

msys installation

6)run msys.exe file from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mingw/MSYS-1.0.10.exe?download to install msys. msys is used to build glew from the source, since using glew binaries for windows gives out errors of the form "undefined reference to `_imp____glewGetShaderiv'". installation process will ask for mingw path. give the full path c:\mingw or whichever path mingw is installed in. msys will get installed into path/msys/1.0. Run the msys batch file. this is a shell program.

glew installation

7)download glew source file,(latest:1.5.0, has support for opengl 2.0, which inturn as support for glsl 1.2) zip file from http://glew.sourceforge.net/, and extract the folder to somewhere inside /msys/1.0. open msys shell program (batch file), and Go to the folder where the makefile in glew directory is present. cd /home/glew. Run the command: make

now copy the GL/glew.h, glxew.h, wglew.h to mingw/include/GL/ folder. copy lib/libglew32.a, libglew32.dll.a files to mingw/lib. copy glew32.dll to c:/windows/system32 folder.

thats all folks. your opengl shader program should compile and execute beautifully in windows vista.

other links

for furthur information please go through the following links

about opengl installation: http://www.opengl.org/wiki/index.php/Getting_started
about opengl usage: http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~mjmcguff/learn/opengl/
about mingw setup: http://www.jumpstation.co.uk/info/mingw_setup_guide.html