If I have installed cygwin, do I have to install mingw in order to use DirectX?
Goal: I want to use cygwin g++ to write DirectX applications.
I know that one of the mingw packages contain directx libraries.
Now that I have installed cygwin, can I use directx also?
BTW, does netbeans open a mingw project using cygwin tool chain?
Thanks
Jack
Re: If I have installed cygwin, do I have to install mingw in order to use DirectX?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lucky6969b
Goal: I want to use cygwin g++ to write DirectX applications.
Isn't this a quirky combination? I would use either Cygwin & OpenGL or DirectX & MSVS. The former would retain a portable solution and the latter would specialize on Windows. And tools and technologies are matched. I don't see what advantages other combinations would give you.
Re: If I have installed cygwin, do I have to install mingw in order to use DirectX?
OpenGL is a layer on top of DirectX, so you loose some performance along the way.
Not all features of DirectX have an OpenGL means to access it.
DirectX is more than just the "graphics" portion (Direct3D or DirectDraw). So portions of directX aren't even covered at all by openGL.
I would say you have your priorities reversed in your statement,
you choose DirectX or OpenGL depending on needs, and the compiler is a side effect, not the other way around.
Re: If I have installed cygwin, do I have to install mingw in order to use DirectX?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
OReubens
OpenGL is a layer on top of DirectX,
No, OpenGL is completly independent of DirectX. They are competing APIs.
Re: If I have installed cygwin, do I have to install mingw in order to use DirectX?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
razzle
No, OpenGL is completly independent of DirectX. They are competing APIs.
no, OpenGL is implemented as a direct3d wrapper on windows, in this sense is a layer on top of directx with the obvious costs. That said, the two apis are so similar nowadays that it's not surpring wrappers exist at the library level ( take a look at chrome ANGLE project, for example ), so those costs might not be that relevant nowadays.
Re: If I have installed cygwin, do I have to install mingw in order to use DirectX?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
superbonzo
no, OpenGL is implemented as a direct3d wrapper on windows
Well, if you say so. I don't know and frankly I don't care.
Beacuse it doesn't change the fact that OpenGL and DirectX are API specifications and completely independent. No one is specified in terms of the other. No one is a layer on top of the other. They're unaffected by where, when and how they're implemented. That's the lay of the land. I'm sure you agree if you think about it.
The built-in support for OpenGL on Windows is very meager to say the least. If no third-party OpenGL driver is installed, Windows will fall back on a software implementation of OpenGL 1.1. And that's stone age regardless of how it's implemented. Today OpenGL is at version 4.4, is usually hardware accelerated, and the fixed pipeline has long ago been replaced by programmable shaders. So without a proper driver from a graphics card manufacturer OpenGL on Windows is close to useless.
