Hi Paul et. al,
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 4:02 PM, Paul Martz <[email protected]> wrote:
> Finally, another thing to consider is replacing our existing feature query
> infrastructure with something like GLEW. GLEW is lightweight, easily
> extensible, and already handles much of what we need for GL feature support.
> But we have discussed this in the past, and if I remember correctly Robert
> was opposed to GLEW on the grounds of the new third party dependency it
> would require.
My opposition to API's like GLEW are:
1) Don't typically support multiple graphics contexts - a critical
issue under Windows as the
extension entry points can be different for each graphics context
2) Centralized management of extensions via external libs doesn't
fit well with the ability to
extend the OSG in 3rd party NodeKits, where the NodeKits support
extensions that that
the OSG version didn't support when shipped - these 3rd party
NodeKits would be forced
to only use the same version of the extension library that the
OSG was linked to.
3) We need to be able to disable extensions when they don't work.
4) Extra dependency
For sure we can do better than what we currently do in an adhoc way,
but it absolutely has to do the job better than the likes of GLEW, it
*has* to decentralized, it *has* to support multiple graphics
contexts, it *has* to extensible. For all the flaws of the current
extension support in the OSG it does at least do all of these and has
proven workable for a decade now. The attraction of GLEW and similar
libs is pretty skin deep.
Robert.
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