How to build and use GLFW

GLFW is a library for OpenGL created by Camilla Berglund. It is a modern replacement to GLUT, to draw windows and handle input.

GLFW 2.x

Ubuntu ships with an ancient version of GLFW that can be installed easily:

$ sudo apt install libglfw-dev

However, it is highly recommended to use GLFW 3.x. It has a different API and your source code and build options will need to be changed to use it.

To remove this ancient GLFW:

$ sudo apt remove libglfw-dev glfw2

GLFW 3.x

I like to install GLFW from Github. You could also get one of its stable releases, the installation steps would be the same for either.

• Get the source:

$ git clone https://github.com/glfw/glfw.git

• Build the library. Note that we request CMake to create shared library files. Why this is not the default on Linux puzzles me!

$ cd glfw
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -D BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON ..

• Install the library:

$ sudo make install

Note that I highly recommend using checkinstall as described here instead of doing this.

• Update the dynamic linker cache, so that the libglfw.so shared library file can be loaded at runtime:

$ sudo ldconfig

If you do not do this, you get an error similar to that described here.

• To use GLFW 3.x calls in your code, include the header file:

#include <GLFW/glfw3.h>

• To link and build your code use the library directive: -lglfw to your build options or CMake.

Tried with: GLFW 20150825 and Ubuntu 14.04