opengl dependencies

Question

I am new to opengl and using C#,opentk for development. My Application is very light weight (just 2d graphics) and i am planning to use software rendering when hardware rendering is not available.

• How do i make sure software rendering works on all computers ? (when hardware rendering is not available.)
• Should i distribute Software rendering libraries like Mesa, myself. or it will already available on all (Windows) OS ?
• in other words, opengl32.dll is always available on all modern windows OS ( > XP SP2 ) or should i distribute that also ?

( My Application is very simple (simple 2d graphics) as of now. I selected opengl instead of GDI+/WPF because, i may extend it to 3D in future. )

Answer 1

OpenGL is a system library. You should not distribute it with your application. Especially on Unix/Linux systems, where it should be installed using the distribution's package manager.

Since opengl32.dll is included in Windows, it falls back to Software Rendering automatically if the pixel format you chose in your application isn't hardware accelerated by the graphics driver.