GLFW window fails to open (Ubuntu)

Question

When compiling and running my GLFW-based C program under Ubuntu (9.04), it fails when trying to open the window (it compiles fine, having installed the latest GLFW). I've tried varying resolutions, going as low as 300x300, and left the bit depths to zeros, hoping a default will catch on.

The relevant piece of code reads (directly snipped from the top of my main file, based on the example file gears.c):

// File: main.c
#include <math.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <GL/glfw.h>

#ifndef PI
#define PI 3.141592654
#endif

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    // Initialize GLFW:
    glfwInit();

    if (!glfwOpenWindow(300, 300, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, GLFW_WINDOW)) // Yo failure!
    {
        printf("Window open failed.\n");
        glfwTerminate();
        return 0;
    }

    glfwSetWindowTitle("...");

    ...

    // Clean up:
    glfwTerminate();

    return 0;
}

Other noteworthy facts are:

• Running Ubuntu inside VirtualBox 3.0.2, config'd w/ 512 MB RAM, 3D acceleration enabled, 64 MB VRAM, Guest Additions successfully installed
• glxgears works fine, even > 300 FPS
• built GLFW using make-x11

• makefile command line:

  gcc 'pkg-config --cflags libglfw' main.c -o program 'pkg-config --libs libglfw' -lglfw -lGLU -lGL -lm

(where the 's should be replaced with single backwards apostrophes, problems formatting)

• Mark's tip on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/746000/c-glfw-window-doesnt-open-on-debian does not seem to alleviate the situation

I'm almost tearing my hair out on this, as it's my first GLFW program on Linux (being happy with Tao and C# on Windows) I've barely got started on it and I'm not able to get the most basic things working.

Edit:

Are there any way to extract a more fancy error message? Any getLastErrorDesc() or debug log files?

Answer 1

You are trying to open a window with 0bpp, of course it's going to fail :)

Try this:

    glfwOpenWindow(
                   800, 600,   // Window size
                   8, 8, 8, 8, // bitdepth per channel (RGBA)
                   24,         // Z buffer bitdepth
                   0,          // Aux buffer bitdepth
                   GLFW_WINDOW // Window
                  );

Also, on latest Ubuntu, there's actually a package called libglfw-dev you can install, just in case you forgot to link any extra libraries (like librandr).

Answer 2

Are you using the version packaged in Ubuntu or some version from the GLFW Subversion repository? The GLXFBConfig selection in the Subversion repo was broken for quite a while, due to the removal of the custom Visual selection, so you may have received bad code.

If that's the case, you should either revert to the version bundled with Ubuntu or pull a fresh tree from Subversion.