On Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:10:15 +0200, Jean-Christophe wrote:
> Another question : is there any (reasonable) reason to avoid
> the use of any of the glu* functions in an OpenGL software ?
As of OpenGL 3, GLU is deprecated. More significantly, it relies upon
deprecated OpenGL functions, so GLU functions won't work with a 3.x core
profile context.
> Or are they all inside a subset of the standard OpenGL library ?
GLU is invariably a separate library, although it was sort-of standard
prior to OpenGL 3. It isn't tied to specific graphic hardware, so you can
use a third-party GLU library if the target platform doesn't provide one
(so long as the compatibility profile is supported).
> ( ... and same question about aux* )
The "aux" library is ancient history; it was superseded by GLUT. Neither
of those were part of the OpenGL standard (or even semi-standard like
GLU).
They were created to allow the "red book" examples to be written without
needing platform-specific boilerplate code, but are too simplistic for
most "real" programs.
GUI programs would normally use either the platform's native windowing
libraries in conjunction with the glX/wgl/agl functions, or a "GL canvas"
widget in a cross-platform toolkit. Games tend to use SDL or SFML.