mingw opengl quick start guide

MinGW OpenGL quick start guide

MinGW is the perfect command line based windows development enviroment, avoiding Microsofts Visual Studio.

Getting MinGW
goto http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/ and choose to download MinGW-5.0.2.exe (or equivilent latest version).
(its tiny, 134k) run it and choose "download and install" with the install type set as "current"
select


[x]mingw base tools

[x]g++

[x]objective C compiler

[x]mingwmake

it will then download and setup the required files.

Setting up the development environment

Add the folder to the PATH environment variables via
start/control pannel/system/advanced/
click "environment variables"
edit the path by appending ;C:\mingw\bin\ (or what ever path you installed to)
Once you have OK'd all the open dialogs you can run the command line via.

start/run/
cmd

to test the install type
gcc
you should get an error about input files, if you get a "command not found" then check the step above before continuing.

now open notepad and enter the following very quick test code.

   #include <stdio.h>
   int main(int argc, char **argv)
   {
       printf ("mingw made this !!\n");
             return (0);
   }

save it as test.c in a convenient location.
cd to the folder you saved test.c to and run
gcc -o test test.c
if there are no errors run
test
tada !

now we are ready to explore using openGL with MinGW
goto http://mywebpage.netscape.com/PtrPck/
and read more about MinGW then scroll down to the section titled NeHe which is about a great openGL resource at http://nehe.gamedev.net/ and download the examples, lesson 4 is good one to try.

extract the zip file into its own folder, cd to that folder and type

del lesson4.exe

mingw32-make

that builds the lesson4.exe using the makefile
you can also use the command

gcc -Wall -s -O2 -mwindows -o lesson1.exe lesson1.cpp -lopengl32 -lglu32

to run the newly built code type

lesson4

that gives you NeHe's lesson number four which is two 2d objects rotating.
http://nehe.gamedev.net/data/lessons/lesson.asp?lesson=04

I then copied and hacked the lesson4 code to include as much as possible of my topblock code.

email

root

Disclaimer:
This page is by me for me, if you are not me then please be aware of the following

I am not responsible for anything that works or does not work including files and pages made available at www.jumpstation.co.uk
I am also not responsible for any information(or what you or others do with it) available at www.jumpstation.co.uk

In fact I'm not responsible for anything ever, so there!