I’ve decided to teach myself Open GL first – then go through the pain of learning OpenGL ES – which means when I scale back to ES, some features I’m going to learn about may be missing.  

Even though I’m more comfortable in Windows, I’m going to make life even more complicated by learning OpenGL on the Mac first.

OpenGL on the Mac

To get started developing for OpenGL on the Mac you are going to need Xcode.  See my previous post for information on that.  I’m assuming you are using the latest version of Mac OS X.

Then what you need to do is visit this link:

http://blog.onesadcookie.com/2007/12/xcodeglut-tutorial.html

At this point you could be done.  What I’m doing here is taking my notes from that article and compressing them.  In a few places I did things a little differently.  But in each case the goal was met:  have a working project that will compile OpenGL and GLUT code.

1. In Xcode select: File / New Project …
2. Under Mac OS X select: Other
3. Click on: Empty Project
4. Click: Choose …
5. Select your development root directory
6. Click: New Folder
7. Give the folder the name of your project, like TestOpenGL
8. For Save As enter the name of your project, like TestOpenGL
9. Click: Save 
10. Under Groups & Files right-click on Targets
11. Select: Add / New Target …
12. Under Mac OS X select: Cocoa
13. Select: Application
14. Click: Next
15. Enter a Target Name, like TestOpenGL
16. Click: Finish
17. You’ll be presented with a Target “TestOpenGL” Info window
18. Scroll to the bottom and double click: GCC_PREFIX_HEADER
19. Clear the contents and click OK
20. Close the Info window
21. In the Groups & Files window of Xcode, right click on the Products folder
22. Select: Add / Existing Frameworks …
23. Expand: Frameworks
24. Select: GLUT.framework
25. Apple-key + click OpenGL.framework
26. Click: Add
27. You’ll see a dialog box, just use the defaults and click Add
28. In the Groups & Files window of Xcode, right click on the Products folder
29. Select: Add / New File …
30. Under Mac OS X select: C and C++
31. Select: C File
32. Click: Next
33. Name it main.c
34. Click: Finish