GLUT - The OpenGL Utility Toolkit

GLUT (pronounced like the glut in gluttony) is the OpenGL Utility Toolkit, a window system independent toolkit for writing OpenGL programs. It implements a simple windowing application programming interface (API) for OpenGL. GLUT makes it considerably easier to learn about and explore OpenGL programming. GLUT provides a portable API so you can write a single OpenGL program that works across all PC and workstation OS platforms.

GLUT is designed for constructing small to medium sized OpenGL programs. While GLUT is well-suited to learning OpenGL and developing simple OpenGL applications, GLUT is not a full-featured toolkit so large applications requiring sophisticated user interfaces are better off using native window system toolkits. GLUT is simple, easy, and small.

The GLUT library has both C, C++ (same as C), FORTRAN, and Ada programming bindings. The GLUT source code distribution is portable to nearly all OpenGL implementations and platforms. The current version is 3.7. Additional releases of the library are not anticipated.

GLUT is not open source. Mark Kilgard maintains the copyright. There are a number of newer and open source alternatives.

The current version of the GLUT API is 3.
The current source code distribution is GLUT 3.7.

The toolkit supports:

Multiple windows for OpenGL rendering
Callback driven event processing
Sophisticated input devices
An 'idle' routine and timers
A simple, cascading pop-up menu facility
Utility routines to generate various solid and wire frame objects
Support for bitmap and stroke fonts
Miscellaneous window management functions

Basic GLUT Information/Downloads

Other GLUT Information/Downloads

GLUT - The OpenGL Utility Toolkit

Coding Resources