OpenGL Environment

2.060 What do I need to compile and run OpenGL programs?

The following applies specifically to C/C++ usage.

To compile and link OpenGL programs, you'll need OpenGL header files and libraries. To run OpenGL programs you may need shared or dynamically loaded OpenGL libraries, or a vendor-specific OpenGL Installable Client Driver (ICD) specific to your device. Also, you may need include files and libraries for the GLU and GLUT libraries. Where you get these files and libraries will depend on which OpenGL system platform you're using.

OpenG.org maintains a list of links to OpenGL Utility libraries. You can download most of what you need from there.

Under Microsoft Windows 9x, NT, and 2000:

If you're using Visual C++, your compiler comes with include files for OpenGL and GLU, as well as .lib files to link with.

For GLUT, download these files. Install glut.h in your compiler's include directory, glut32.lib in your compiler's lib directory, and glut32.dll in your Windows system directory (c:\windows\system for Windows 9x, or c:\winnt\system32 for Windows NT/2000).

In summary, a fully installed Windows OpenGL development environment will look like this:

File
Location

gl.h
glut.h
glu.h
[compiler]\include\gl

Opengl32.lib
glut32.lib
glu32.lib
[compiler]\lib

Opengl32.dll
glut32.dll
glu32.dll
[system]

where [compiler] is your compiler directory (such as c:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98) and [system] is your Windows 9x/NT/2000 system directory (such as c:\winnt\system32 or c:\windows\system).

If you're on a hardware platform that accelerates OpenGL, you'll need to install the ICD for your device. This may have shipped with your hardware, or you can download it from your hardware vendor's Web page. Your vendor may also provide a replacement or addition for gl.h, which provides definitions and declarations for vendor-specific OpenGL extensions. See the extensions section in this FAQ for more information.

If you see files such as opengl.lib and glut.lib, these are SGI's unsupported libraries for Microsoft Windows. They should not be used. To use hardware acceleration, the Microsoft libraries are recommended. More info on the SGI libraries can be found here. Always link with either all Microsoft libraries (e.g., glu32.lib, glut32.lib, and opengl32.lib) or all SGI libraries (e.g., glu.lib, glut.lib, and opengl.lib). You can't use a combination of both Microsoft libarires and SGI libraries. However, you can install both sets of libraries on the same system. If you use SGI's .lib files, you'll need the corresponding .dll files installed in your system folder. (i.e., linking against opengl.lib requires that opengl.dll is installed at run time).

You'll need to instruct your compiler to link with the OpenGL, GLU, and GLUT libraries. In Visual C++ 6.0, you can accomplish this with the Project menu's Settings dialog box. Scroll to the Link tab. In the Object/library modules edit box, add glut32.lib, glu32.lib, and opengl32.lib to the end of any text that is present.

http://www.opengl.org/resources/faq/technical/gettingstarted.htm