easy-gl

Documentation

easy-gl is a modern C++20 RAII wrapper around OpenGL. It provides safe resource ownership, convenient high-level methods, and full type safety — all delegating low-level calls to meta-gl instead of raw OpenGL.

What easy-gl gives you

Move-only RAII resource classes — textures, buffers, programs, framebuffers all clean up automatically.
Type-safe OpenGL enums from meta-gl — no more integer constants scattered through your code.
A Device class that centralises all render-state mutations and draw calls.
Full C++20 — std::span, enum class, constexpr, concepts where they help.
No dependency on raw OpenGL headers in your application code.

Layer diagram

OpenGL / OpenGL ES

↓

meta-gl — procedural type-safe wrappers, enum classes, typed handles, std::span

↓

easy-gl — OOP RAII classes, move-only ownership, convenience methods

↓

Your application

Resource classes at a glance

Buffer

Vertex, index, uniform, SSBO and other GPU buffer types.

Texture

2D, 3D, array, cubemap textures with mipmap generation.

Shader

Vertex, fragment, geometry, compute shader compilation.

Program

Link shaders, set uniforms, use programs.

VertexArray

Vertex attribute layout definition and VAO management.

Framebuffer

Offscreen rendering targets with attachment management.

Renderbuffer

Depth/stencil storage for framebuffer attachments.

Sampler

Decoupled texture sampling parameters.

Query

Occlusion, primitives-generated and timing queries.

Sync

GPU/CPU synchronisation fence objects.

TransformFeedback

Capture vertex shader outputs into buffers.

Minimal example

// Initialize the device with a function pointer loader (SDL3 shown)
easygl::Device device;
device.initialize(reinterpret_cast<easygl::GLGetProcAddressFn>(SDL_GL_GetProcAddress));

// Create a shader program from source strings directly
easygl::Program program(vertSrc, fragSrc);

// RAII buffer — destroyed automatically when it goes out of scope
easygl::Buffer vbo;
vbo.create();
vbo.bind(easygl::BufferTarget::Array);
vbo.set_data(easygl::BufferTarget::Array, vertices, sizeof(vertices));

// Render loop
device.set_clear_color(0.1f, 0.1f, 0.1f, 1.0f);
device.clear(easygl::ClearFlags::Color | easygl::ClearFlags::Depth);
program.use();
device.draw_arrays(easygl::PrimitiveType::Triangles, 0, 3);

Quick navigation

Page	What it covers
Getting Started	CMake integration, first program, compile and run.
Architecture	How easy-gl, meta-gl and OpenGL relate to each other.
Ownership & RAII	Move semantics, generation tracking, context recovery.
Error Handling	Exceptions, validation, debug output.
Hello Triangle	Full SDL3 + easy-gl example with annotation.