[glutin] ([GitHub][glutin-github], [docs.rs][glutin-docs])

by [@kchibisov] ([rust-windowing]) is a crate that is well known for

being an OpenGL platform initialization on top of winit.

With glutin `0.30`, this is no longer the case. The crate was

rewritten from scratch and redesigned around [raw-window-handle], so

you don't need [winit] anymore in this equation and it could be used with

whatever windowing library you prefer, like [smithay-client-toolkit] for

pure Wayland clients.

Given everything is based on raw-window-handle the crate is more low-level

now and also exposes the underlying platform API like `EGL`, `GLX`, and `WGL`

directly. There's already an interest of using glutin to handle `EGL` in

projects like [Smithay].

Previously with glutin `0.29` everything was based around the single

[`WindowedContext`] - while this was convinient for some users and worked on

desktop platforms, that fact was a major pain on Android where the window

gets destroyed over time, but its context could be kept around, or when you

fail to query configuration with supplied parameters leading to chain creating

`WindowedContext` and causing delays on startup. For example, you can create all

the objects and then fail on setting vsync, forcing you to start over.

None of that is an issue with glutin `0.30.0`. The API is now structured around

`Display`, `Context`, `Surface`, and `Config`, where every object is built from

the `Display` and has its own role which is close to what you usually can find

in OpenGL native rendering platforms specifications, like `EGL`.

Unfortunatelly, the new API isn't as easy to bootstrap as it was with old

glutin, especially when you want to use platforms like `WGL` and `GLX`.

However, if you're using winit there will be (or is already) a special crate

[glutin-winit] to handle platform-specific `Display` creation for you.

To see the new API in action, look at the [glutin examples]. They

should work on desktop platforms and Android (you may even notice that there's

no special code for Android at all!).

One note to add, is that iOS is **no longer** supported, but only due to

lack of maintainers for it. If you rely on iOS support in glutin, the devs

encourage you to help contributing to it upstream, or you'd stuck with glutin

`0.29` which won't receive any updates anymore.

For further info, check out the [winit matrix room](https://matrix.to/#/#winit:matrix.org)

or [#winit](https://web.libera.chat/#winit) at libera.chat.

[glutin]: https://crates.io/crates/glutin

[glutin examples]: https://github.com/rust-windowing/glutin/tree/master/glutin_examples

[glutin-winit]: https://github.com/rust-windowing/glutin/pull/1517

[winit]: https://crates.io/crates/winit

[Smithay]: https://github.com/smithay/smithay

[`WindowedContext`]: https://docs.rs/glutin/0.29.1/glutin/type.WindowedContext.html

[smithay-client-toolkit]: https://crates.io/crates/smithay-client-toolkit

[glutin-github]: https://github.com/rust-windowing/glutin

[raw-window-handle]: https://crates.io/crates/raw-window-handle

[glutin-docs]: https://docs.rs/glutin

[@kchibisov]: https://github.com/kchibisov

[rust-windowing]: https://github.com/rust-windowing