Difference between GL and GLEW?

Aug 21, 2015 at 5:58am
What's the difference between gl.h and glew.h?

And which library is recommended?
Aug 21, 2015 at 6:23am
They are header files, not libraries. A header file is part of some library (or application).

What do those files contain? Do they have any comments?

Do you use a package management system that could tell, which packages provide those files? Packages tend to have description.


The gl.h is one header from OpenGL library. There are more than one OpenGL library version, because each hardware vendor tends to add extensions that their GPU's support.


The glew.h is probably one header from OpenGL Extension Wrangler library. See http://glew.sourceforge.net


There is no question "Which?", but you can ask: "Both or not?"
Aug 21, 2015 at 6:41am
If you misunderstood my question, I will restate my question.


I've seen people using gl and glew but not together...which brings me a question, I know that both library is OpenGL library but what's the difference between these two? Why do some people prefer gl over glew and glew over gl?
Last edited on Aug 21, 2015 at 6:41am
Aug 21, 2015 at 8:09am
Restate: check out what the GLEW actually does.
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