nigels-com/glew

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

2894 stars · 650 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

GLEW (The OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library) is a cross-platform C/C++ library for loading and querying OpenGL extensions at runtime. It exposes OpenGL core and extension functions through a single header file and includes utility tools like glewinfo and visualinfo.

Use cases

• load OpenGL extension functions at runtime in a C++ application
• query which OpenGL extensions the target GPU supports
• write cross-platform OpenGL code with a single extension header
• check OpenGL capabilities on Windows, Linux, and macOS
• use EGL, GLX, or WGL context extension entry points
• generate a report of supported OpenGL features with glewinfo

When to choose

• you are writing a C/C++ OpenGL application and need extension loading
• you want a mature, widely supported, single-header OpenGL loader
• you need to support legacy OpenGL versions and multiple windowing systems (WGL, GLX, EGL)

When to avoid

• you are targeting modern OpenGL/Vulkan only and prefer a lighter loader like glad
• you are doing WebGL or browser-based graphics where extension loading is handled for you
• you need a full rendering or game engine rather than an extension loader

Facets

library · maturity stable

graphics sdk developer-tools graphics cross-platform developer-tools cross-platform windows cpp c opengl extension-loading glx egl wgl c-library game-development linux macos

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