One of the major requests by OpenGL users has been the ability to
specify settings when creating a GL context, like the version to use
or whether the debug support should be enabled.
We have a couple of requirements in terms of API:
• avoid, if at all possible, the "C arrays of integers with
attribute, value pairs", which are hard to write and hard
to bind in non-C languages.
• allow failing in a recoverable way.
• do not make the GL context creation API a mess of arguments.
Looking at prior art, it seems that a common pattern is to split the
construction phase in two:
• a first phase that creates a GL context wrapper object and
does preliminary checks on the environment.
• a second phase that creates the backend-specific GL object.
We adopted a similar pattern:
• gdk_window_create_gl_context() creates a GdkGLContext
• gdk_gl_context_realize() creates the underlying resources
Calling gdk_gl_context_make_current() also realizes the context, so
simple GL users do not need to care. Advanced users will want to
call gdk_window_create_gl_context(), set up the optional requirements,
and then call gdk_gl_context_realize(). If either of these two steps
fails, it's possible to recover by changing the requirements, or simply
creating a new GdkGLContext instance.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=741946
22e6f37c9c