This section describes how to build the tutorials.

What You Need to Download.  Obviously, you will need a C++ compiler and build environment. You will also need the Windows or Linux operating systems, as these are the only OS's supported by the tutorials. Supported build environments include Visual Studio 2008/2010, Code::Blocks, and Linux-based GNU Makefiles. Other build systems may work, but they are not regularly tested.

You will need to download the source distribution; download the .zip file with the highest version number. All of the libraries needed to build the tutorials are bundled as part of the distribution, so this is the only source code download you will need.

You will also need to download and install the CMake utility for your platform of choice.

You will need minimal familiarity with using the command line in order to build these tutorials. Also, any mention of directories is always relative to where you unzipped this distribution.

Distribution File Layout.  The layout of the files in the tutorial directory is quite simple. The framework directory and all directories of the form Tut* contain the source code for the tutorials themselves. Each Tut* directory has the code for the various tutorials. The framework directory simply contains utility code that is commonly used by each tutorial.

Each tutorial contains one or more projects; each project is referenced in the text for that tutorial.

The Documents directory contains the source for the text documentation explaining how these tutorials work. This source is in xml files using the DocBook 5.0 format.

The other directories either contain libraries used by the tutorials or data files that the tutorials load.

CMake.  CMake generates build files for a specific platform. CMake's build scripts use their own language.

Note that CMake only generates build files; once the build files are created, you can use them as normal. It can generate project files for Visual Studio, Code::Blocks, as well as GNU Makefiles. And unless you want to modify one of the tutorials, you only need to run CMake once.

The CMake download comes as a pre-built executable for all platforms of interest, including Linux.

Unofficial OpenGL SDK.  Bundled with the tutorials is the Unofficial OpenGL SDK (you do not need to download it separately). This is an aggregation of libraries, unifying a number of tools for developing OpenGL applications, all bound together with a unified build system. You do not need to download it; a version of the SDK is part of the tutorial distribution. The copy that comes with these tutorials does not contain the documentation or GLFW.

The SDK libraries are built using CMake as well. The tutorial-build is aware of the SDK and will take care of building it, when you build the tutorials as described below.

There is no need to execute make install or similar commands when building the SDK. The SDK is designed to be used where it is; it does not install itself to any system directories on your machine. Incidentally, neither do these tutorials.

Tutorial Building and Running. 

All of the tutorials are built at once; go to the root directory of the distribution and use CMake on the CMakeLists.txt file in that directory. It will put all of the tutorials into a single project that you can build them all.

Each tutorial will generally have more than one source file and generate multiple executables. Each executable represents a different section of the tutorial, as explained in that tutorial's documentation.

If you look at any of the tutorial source files, you will not find the main function defined anywhere. This function is defined in framework/framework.cpp; it and all of the other source files in the framework directory is shared by every tutorial. It does the basic boilerplate work: creating a FreeGLUT window, etc. This allows the tutorial source files to focus on the useful OpenGL-specific code.

Note that the framework project is a library, not an executable. So attempting to run the framework from your IDE of choice will not work. You must select one of the tutorial projects and set it to be the active project. Then you will be able to run that tutorial from the IDE.