Using OpenGL extensions On Windows

Question

I want to use the functions exposed under the OpenGL extensions. I'm on Windows, how do I do this?

Answer 1

Follow-up question: I'm using GLEE at the moment, is there any reason for me to switch?

Answer 2

@Kronikarz: From the looks of it, GLEW seems to be the way of the future. NVIDIA already ships it along with its OpenGL SDK. And its latest release was in 2007 compared to GLEE which was in 2006.

But, the usage of both libraries looks almost the same to me. (GLEW has an init() which needs to be called before anything else though.) So, you don't need to switch unless you find some extension not being supported under GLEE.

Answer 3

A 'Very strong reason' not to use GLEW might be that the library is not supported by your compiler/IDE. E.g: Borland C++ Builder.

In that case, you might want to rebuild the library from source. If it works, great, otherwise manual extension loading isnt as bad as it is made to sound.