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+Using CMake

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Note: GLFW behaves like most other libraries that use CMake so this guide mostly describes the basic configure/generate/compile sequence. If you are already familiar with this from other projects, you may want to focus on the Installing dependencies and CMake options sections for GLFW-specific information.

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GLFW uses CMake to generate project files or makefiles for your chosen development environment. To compile GLFW, first generate these files with CMake and then use them to compile the GLFW library.

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If you are on Windows and macOS you can download CMake from their site.

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If you are on a Unix-like system such as Linux, FreeBSD or Cygwin or have a package system like Fink, MacPorts or Homebrew, you can install its CMake package.

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CMake is a complex tool and this guide will only show a few of the possible ways to set up and compile GLFW. The CMake project has their own much more detailed CMake user guide that includes everything in this guide not specific to GLFW. It may be a useful companion to this one.

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+Installing dependencies

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The C/C++ development environments in Visual Studio, Xcode and MinGW come with all necessary dependencies for compiling GLFW, but on Unix-like systems like Linux and FreeBSD you will need a few extra packages.

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+Dependencies for X11 on Unix-like systems

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To compile GLFW for X11, you need to have the X11 development packages installed. They are not needed to build or run programs that use GLFW.

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On Debian and derivates like Ubuntu and Linux Mint the xorg-dev meta-package pulls in the development packages for all of X11.

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sudo apt install xorg-dev

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On Fedora and derivatives like Red Hat the X11 extension packages libXcursor-devel, libXi-devel, libXinerama-devel and libXrandr-devel required by GLFW pull in all its other dependencies.

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sudo dnf install libXcursor-devel libXi-devel libXinerama-devel libXrandr-devel

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On FreeBSD the X11 headers are installed along the end-user X11 packages, so if you have an X server running you should have the headers as well. If not, install the xorgproto package.

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pkg install xorgproto

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On Cygwin the xorgproto package in the Devel section of the GUI installer will install the headers and other development related files for all of X11.

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Once you have the required depdendencies, move on to Generating build files with CMake.

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+Dependencies for Wayland on Unix-like systems

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To compile GLFW for Wayland, you need to have the Wayland and xkbcommon development packages installed. They are not needed to build or run programs that use GLFW.

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On Debian and derivates like Ubuntu and Linux Mint you will need the libwayland-dev, libxkbcommon-dev, wayland-protocols and extra-cmake-modules packages.

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sudo apt install libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev wayland-protocols extra-cmake-modules

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On Fedora and derivatives like Red Hat you will need the wayland-devel, libxkbcommon-devel, wayland-protocols-devel and extra-cmake-modules packages.

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sudo dnf install wayland-devel libxkbcommon-devel wayland-protocols-devel extra-cmake-modules

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On FreeBSD you will need the wayland, libxkbcommon, wayland-protocols and kf5-extra-cmake-modules packages.

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pkg install wayland libxkbcommon wayland-protocols kf5-extra-cmake-modules

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Once you have the required depdendencies, move on to Generating build files with CMake.

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+Generating build files with CMake

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Once you have all necessary dependencies it is time to generate the project files or makefiles for your development environment. CMake needs two paths for this:

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the path to the root directory of the GLFW source tree (not its src subdirectory)
the path to the directory where the generated build files and compiled binaries will be placed

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If these are the same, it is called an in-tree build, otherwise it is called an out-of-tree build.

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Out-of-tree builds are recommended as they avoid cluttering up the source tree. They also allow you to have several build directories for different configurations all using the same source tree.

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A common pattern when building a single configuration is to have a build directory named build in the root of the source tree.

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+Generating files with the CMake GUI

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Start the CMake GUI and set the paths to the source and build directories described above. Then press Configure and Generate.

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If you wish change any CMake variables in the list, press Configure and then Generate to have the new values take effect. The variable list will be populated after the first configure step.

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By default GLFW will use X11 on Linux and other Unix-like systems other than macOS. To use Wayland instead, set the GLFW_USE_WAYLAND option in the GLFW section of the variable list, then apply the new value as described above.

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Once you have generated the project files or makefiles for your chosen development environment, move on to Compiling the library.

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+Generating files with the CMake command-line tool

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To make a build directory, pass the source and build directories to the cmake command. These can be relative or absolute paths. The build directory is created if it doesn't already exist.

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cmake -S path/to/glfw -B path/to/build

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It is common to name the build directory build and place it in the root of the source tree when only planning to build a single configuration.

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cd path/to/glfw

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cmake -S . -B build

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Without other flags these will generate Visual Studio project files on Windows and makefiles on other platforms. You can choose other targets using the -G flag.

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cmake -S path/to/glfw -B path/to/build -G Xcode

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By default GLFW will use X11 on Linux and other Unix-like systems other than macOS. To use Wayland instead, set the GLFW_USE_WAYLAND CMake option.

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cmake -S path/to/glfw -B path/to/build -D GLFW_USE_WAYLAND=1

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Once you have generated the project files or makefiles for your chosen development environment, move on to Compiling the library.

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+Compiling the library

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You should now have all required dependencies and the project files or makefiles necessary to compile GLFW. Go ahead and compile the actual GLFW library with these files as you would with any other project.

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With Visual Studio open GLFW.sln and use the Build menu. With Xcode open GLFW.xcodeproj and use the Project menu.

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With Linux, macOS and other forms of Unix, run make.

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cd path/to/build

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make

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With MinGW, it is mingw32-make.

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cd path/to/build

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mingw32-make

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Any CMake build directory can also be built with the cmake command and the --build flag.

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cmake --build path/to/build

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This will run the platform specific build tool the directory was generated for.

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Once the GLFW library is compiled you are ready to build your application, linking it to the GLFW library. See Building applications for more information.

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+CMake options

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The CMake files for GLFW provide a number of options, although not all are available on all supported platforms. Some of these are de facto standards among projects using CMake and so have no GLFW_ prefix.

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If you are using the GUI version of CMake, these are listed and can be changed from there. If you are using the command-line version of CMake you can use the ccmake ncurses GUI to set options. Some package systems like Ubuntu and other distributions based on Debian GNU/Linux have this tool in a separate cmake-curses-gui package.

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Finally, if you don't want to use any GUI, you can set options from the cmake command-line with the -D flag.

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cmake -S path/to/glfw -B path/to/build -D BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON

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+Shared CMake options

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BUILD_SHARED_LIBS determines whether GLFW is built as a static library or as a DLL / shared library / dynamic library. This is disabled by default, producing a static GLFW library.

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GLFW_BUILD_EXAMPLES determines whether the GLFW examples are built along with the library.

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GLFW_BUILD_TESTS determines whether the GLFW test programs are built along with the library.

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GLFW_BUILD_DOCS determines whether the GLFW documentation is built along with the library. This is enabled by default if Doxygen is found by CMake during configuration.

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GLFW_VULKAN_STATIC determines whether to use the Vulkan loader linked directly with the application. This is disabled by default.

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+Windows specific CMake options

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USE_MSVC_RUNTIME_LIBRARY_DLL determines whether to use the DLL version or the static library version of the Visual C++ runtime library. When enabled, the DLL version of the Visual C++ library is used. This is enabled by default.

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On CMake 3.15 and later you can set the standard CMake CMAKE_MSVC_RUNTIME_LIBRARY variable instead of this GLFW-specific option.

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GLFW_USE_HYBRID_HPG determines whether to export the NvOptimusEnablement and AmdPowerXpressRequestHighPerformance symbols, which force the use of the high-performance GPU on Nvidia Optimus and AMD PowerXpress systems. These symbols need to be exported by the EXE to be detected by the driver, so the override will not work if GLFW is built as a DLL. This is disabled by default, letting the operating system and driver decide.

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+Wayland specific CMake options

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GLFW_USE_WAYLAND determines whether to compile the library for Wayland. This option is only available on Linux and other Unix-like systems other than macOS. This is disabled by default.

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+Cross-compilation with CMake and MinGW

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Both Cygwin and many Linux distributions have MinGW or MinGW-w64 packages. For example, Cygwin has the mingw64-i686-gcc and mingw64-x86_64-gcc packages for 32- and 64-bit version of MinGW-w64, while Debian GNU/Linux and derivatives like Ubuntu have the mingw-w64 package for both.

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GLFW has CMake toolchain files in the CMake subdirectory that set up cross-compilation of Windows binaries. To use these files you set the CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE CMake variable with the -D flag add an option when configuring and generating the build files.

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cmake -S path/to/glfw -B path/to/build -D CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=path/to/file

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The exact toolchain file to use depends on the prefix used by the MinGW or MinGW-w64 binaries on your system. You can usually see this in the /usr directory. For example, both the Ubuntu and Cygwin MinGW-w64 packages have /usr/x86_64-w64-mingw32 for the 64-bit compilers, so the correct invocation would be:

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cmake -S path/to/glfw -B path/to/build -D CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=CMake/x86_64-w64-mingw32.cmake

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The path to the toolchain file is relative to the path to the GLFW source tree passed to the -S flag, not to the current directory.

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For more details see the CMake toolchain guide.

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+Compiling GLFW manually

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If you wish to compile GLFW without its CMake build environment then you will have to do at least some of the platform detection yourself. GLFW needs a configuration macro to be defined in order to know what window system it is being compiled for and also has optional, platform-specific ones for various features.

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When building with CMake, the glfw_config.h configuration header is generated based on the current platform and CMake options. The GLFW CMake environment defines GLFW_USE_CONFIG_H, which causes this header to be included by internal.h. Without this macro, GLFW will expect the necessary configuration macros to be defined on the command-line.

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The window creation API is used to create windows, handle input, monitors, gamma ramps and clipboard. The options are:

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_GLFW_COCOA to use the Cocoa frameworks
_GLFW_WIN32 to use the Win32 API
_GLFW_X11 to use the X Window System
_GLFW_WAYLAND to use the Wayland API (experimental and incomplete)
_GLFW_OSMESA to use the OSMesa API (headless and non-interactive)

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If you are building GLFW as a shared library / dynamic library / DLL then you must also define _GLFW_BUILD_DLL. Otherwise, you must not define it.

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If you are linking the Vulkan loader directly with your application then you must also define _GLFW_VULKAN_STATIC. Otherwise, GLFW will attempt to use the external version.

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If you are using a custom name for the Vulkan, EGL, GLX, OSMesa, OpenGL, GLESv1 or GLESv2 library, you can override the default names by defining those you need of _GLFW_VULKAN_LIBRARY, _GLFW_EGL_LIBRARY, _GLFW_GLX_LIBRARY, _GLFW_OSMESA_LIBRARY, _GLFW_OPENGL_LIBRARY, _GLFW_GLESV1_LIBRARY and _GLFW_GLESV2_LIBRARY. Otherwise, GLFW will use the built-in default names.

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Note: None of the GLFW header option macros may be defined during the compilation of GLFW. If you define any of these in your build files, make sure they are not applied to the GLFW sources.

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Table of Contents