Zig + Google Angle + OpenGL ES 3.0 boilerplate

Why OpenGL ES 3.0? Motivation:

• OpenGL Desktop versions have different level of support: MacOS stops at 4.1... Windows and Linux get 4.6. Embedded systems don't support it.
• OpenGL ES by default has a similar/worse problem: it is not even supported on MacOS (only iOS?). Different versions depending on vendors/drivers.
• Different versions => different feature set + different GLSL language to support => headache

The goal of this sample is to show how to get and use a valid OpenGL ES 3.0 context with Zig and Google Angle.

Google Angle provides a compliant OpenGL ES 3.0 + GLSL 300 es on ALL 3 major desktop OS.

In addition, OpenGL ES 3.0 is supported on tons of embedded systems (phones) + Raspberry PI 3+...

Requires Zig 0.14+

Output example

zig build run

Windows output:

debug: OpenGL renderer: ANGLE (NVIDIA, NVIDIA RTX A2000 Laptop GPU (0x000025B8) Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0, D3D11-32.0.15.6103)
debug: OpenGL ES 3.0.0 (ANGLE 2.1.25165 git hash: bbf92d12266d)
debug: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00 (ANGLE 2.1.25165 git hash: bbf92d12266d)
debug: OpenGL extensions count: 129
... the list of extensions ...

MacOS output:

debug: OpenGL renderer: ANGLE (Apple, Apple M1 Pro, OpenGL 4.1 Metal - 89.3)
debug: OpenGL ES 3.0.0 (ANGLE 2.1.24801 git hash: 914c97c116e0)
debug: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00 (ANGLE 2.1.24801 git hash: 914c97c116e0)
debug: OpenGL extensions count: 103
... the list of extensions ...

Linux output

debug: OpenGL renderer: ANGLE (AMD, AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (radeonsi navi10 LLVM 19.1.1), OpenGL 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 24.2.8-1ubuntu1~24.10.1)
debug: OpenGL ES 3.0.0 (ANGLE 2.1.24969 git hash: 079266db4452)
debug: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00 (ANGLE 2.1.24969 git hash: 079266db4452)
debug: OpenGL extensions count: 145
... the list of extensions ...

Linux output from the installed dir :( (need LD_LIBRARY_PATH)

$ ./angle_gles 
All your codebase are belong to us.
Run `zig build test` to run the tests.
Error loading EGL entry points: dlopen(/home/michael/dev/zig/angle-gles/zig-out/binlibGLESv2.so) failed with error: /home/michael/dev/zig/angle-gles/zig-out/binlibGLESv2.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory, stat() call failed.
Segmentation fault at address 0x0

How to use Angle + GLFW

GLFW + Angle Linux

MacOS understanding rpath and friends