GLFW

Introduction

GLFW is an Open Source, multi-platform library for OpenGL, OpenGL ES and Vulkan application development. It provides a simple, platform-independent API for creating windows, contexts and surfaces, reading input, handling events, etc.

The current stable release is version 3.2. See the downloads page for details and files, or fetch the latest branch, which always points to the latest stable release. Each release starting with 3.0 also has a corresponding annotated tag with source and binary archives.

This is version 3.2.1, which is not yet described.

If you are new to GLFW, you may find the tutorial for GLFW 3 useful. If you have used GLFW 2 in the past, there is a transition guide for moving to the GLFW 3 API.

Compiling GLFW

GLFW itself requires only the headers and libraries for your window system. It does not need the headers for any context creation API (WGL, GLX, EGL, NSGL) or rendering API (OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan) to enable support for them.

GLFW supports compilation on Windows with Visual C++ 2010 and later, MinGW and MinGW-w64, on OS X with Clang and on Linux and other Unix-like systems with GCC and Clang. It will likely compile in other environments as well, but this is not regularly tested.

There are also pre-compiled Windows binaries available for all compilers supported on that platform.

See the compilation guide in the documentation for more information.

Using GLFW

See the building application guide guide in the documentation for more information.

System requirements

GLFW supports Windows XP and later, OS X 10.7 Lion and later, and Linux and other Unix-like systems with the X Window System. Experimental implementations for the Wayland protocol and the Mir display server are available but not yet officially supported.

See the compatibility guide in the documentation for more information.

Dependencies

GLFW itself depends only on the headers and libraries for your window system.

The examples and test programs depend on a number of tiny libraries. These are located in the deps/ directory.

• getopt_port for examples with command-line options
• TinyCThread for threaded examples
• An OpenGL 3.2 core loader generated by glad for examples using modern OpenGL
• linmath.h for linear algebra in examples
• Vulkan headers for Vulkan tests

The Vulkan example additionally requires the Vulkan SDK to be installed, or it will not be included in the build.

The documentation is generated with Doxygen. If CMake does not find Doxygen, the documentation will not be generated when you build.

Reporting bugs

Bugs are reported to our issue tracker. Please check the contribution guide for information on what to include when reporting a bug.

Changelog

• Added on-demand loading of Vulkan and context creation API libraries
• Added _GLFW_VULKAN_STATIC build macro to make the library use the Vulkan loader linked statically into the application (#820)
• Bugfix: Single compilation unit builds failed due to naming conflicts (#783)
• Bugfix: The range checks for glfwSetCursorPos used the wrong minimum (#773)
• Bugfix: Defining GLFW_INCLUDE_VULKAN when compiling the library did not fail with the expected error message (#823)
• Bugfix: Inherited value of CMAKE_MODULE_PATH was clobbered (#822)
• [Win32] Bugfix: glfwSetClipboardString created an unnecessary intermediate copy of the string
• [Win32] Bugfix: Examples failed to build on Visual C++ 2010 due to C99 in linmath.h (#785)
• [Win32] Bugfix: The first shown window ignored the GLFW_MAXIMIZED hint when the process was provided a STARTUPINFO (#780)
• [Cocoa] Bugfix: Event processing would segfault on some machines due to a previous distributed notification listener not being fully removed (#817,#826)
• [X11] Bugfix: Window size limits were ignored if the minimum or maximum size was set to GLFW_DONT_CARE (#805)
• [WGL] Added reporting of errors from WGL_ARB_create_context extension
• [GLX] Bugfix: Dynamically loaded entry points were not verified
• [EGL] Added lib prefix matching between EGL and OpenGL ES library binaries
• [EGL] Bugfix: Dynamically loaded entry points were not verified

Contact

On glfw.org you can find the latest version of GLFW, as well as news, documentation and other information about the project.

If you have questions related to the use of GLFW, we have a support forum, and the IRC channel #glfw on Freenode.

If you have a bug to report, a patch to submit or a feature you'd like to request, please file it in the issue tracker on GitHub.

Finally, if you're interested in helping out with the development of GLFW or porting it to your favorite platform, join us on GitHub or IRC.

Acknowledgements

GLFW exists because people around the world donated their time and lent their skills.

• Bobyshev Alexander
• artblanc
• arturo
• Matt Arsenault
• Keith Bauer
• John Bartholomew
• Niklas Behrens
• Niklas Bergström
• Doug Binks
• blanco
• Martin Capitanio
• Chi-kwan Chan
• Lambert Clara
• Andrew Corrigan
• Noel Cower
• Jarrod Davis
• Olivier Delannoy
• Paul R. Deppe
• Michael Dickens
• Роман Донченко
• Mario Dorn
• Jonathan Dummer
• Ralph Eastwood
• Siavash Eliasi
• Michael Fogleman
• Gerald Franz
• GeO4d
• Marcus Geelnard
• Eloi Marín Gratacós
• Stefan Gustavson
• Sylvain Hellegouarch
• Matthew Henry
• heromyth
• Lucas Hinderberger
• Paul Holden
• Warren Hu
• IntellectualKitty
• Aaron Jacobs
• Toni Jovanoski
• Arseny Kapoulkine
• Osman Keskin
• Cameron King
• Peter Knut
• Christoph Kubisch
• Eric Larson
• Robin Leffmann
• Glenn Lewis
• Shane Liesegang
• Eyal Lotem
• Дмитри Малышев
• Martins Mozeiko
• Tristam MacDonald
• Hans Mackowiak
• Zbigniew Mandziejewicz
• Kyle McDonald
• David Medlock
• Bryce Mehring
• Jonathan Mercier
• Marcel Metz
• Jonathan Miller
• Kenneth Miller
• Bruce Mitchener
• Jack Moffitt
• Jeff Molofee
• Jon Morton
• Pierre Moulon
• Julian Møller
• Kamil Nowakowski
• Ozzy
• Andri Pálsson
• Peoro
• Braden Pellett
• Arturo J. Pérez
• Orson Peters
• Emmanuel Gil Peyrot
• Cyril Pichard
• Pieroman
• Philip Rideout
• Jorge Rodriguez
• Ed Ropple
• Aleksey Rybalkin
• Riku Salminen
• Brandon Schaefer
• Sebastian Schuberth
• Matt Sealey
• SephiRok
• Steve Sexton
• Systemcluster
• Yoshiki Shibukawa
• Dmitri Shuralyov
• Daniel Skorupski
• Bradley Smith
• Patrick Snape
• Julian Squires
• Johannes Stein
• Justin Stoecker
• Elviss Strazdins
• Nathan Sweet
• TTK-Bandit
• Sergey Tikhomirov
• Arthur Tombs
• Ioannis Tsakpinis
• Samuli Tuomola
• urraka
• Jari Vetoniemi
• Ricardo Vieira
• Nicholas Vitovitch
• Simon Voordouw
• Torsten Walluhn
• Patrick Walton
• Xo Wang
• Jay Weisskopf
• Frank Wille
• yuriks
• Santi Zupancic
• Jonas Ådahl
• Lasse Öörni
• All the unmentioned and anonymous contributors in the GLFW community, for bug reports, patches, feedback, testing and encouragement