WSL is the Windows Subsystem for Linux, it allows you to run a Linux environment under Windows 10 / 11. It will allow you to run the NGL demos in a very similar way to the lab environment. This can somethings be easier than setting up under native windows.
Whilst there are a number of linux distributions available for WSL I have only tested with Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS as this has the simplest out of the box installation for GPU and other tools. I strongly recommend you use this version.
You will also need the correct drivers (I test with nVidia game drivers which support accelerated GPU under wsl)
First follow the steps to install WSLg or go to the app store and install the Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS app. More details can be found here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/tutorials/gui-apps
Once the initial setup has been done (adding a user and password), we need to install some base packages in the terminal. It is also suggested that VSCode is installed in Windows and the Remote WSL extension is installed. This will allow you to edit and run code in the WSL environment.
suso apt-get update
sudo apt install -y build-essential wget vim cmake ninja-build
sudo apt install -y libgl-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev libxi-dev
sudo apt install -y git curl zip unzip tar pkg-config python3 pip
sudo apt install libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev xorg-dev libglu1-mesa-dev pkg-config
sudo apt install mesa-utils freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev
sudo apt install libqt6opengl6-devThis will install all of the base packages needed to build NGL and run the demos.
The vcpkg install is the same as usual, to start with we will only install the core libraries we need to run the NGL demos, you may also need to install other packages later.
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git ~/vcpkg
cd ~/vcpkg
./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
./vcpkg install install gtest glm gl3w glfw3 rapidjson rapidxml fmt freetype openimageioThis may take some time to build, grab a coffee and come back later.
We can clone the NGL repository usually you will only need the head of the repo not the full history so we can use the --depth 1 flag to only get the latest version.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com:/NCCA/NGL ~/NGLBuild
cd ~/NGLBuild/
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/NGL -G Ninja -B build -S .
cd build
cmake --build .
./NGLTests This should build all the NGL library and Unit tests, if you get any errors please check the output and make sure you have installed all the packages above.
We can now install NGL using
cmake --build . --target installWe can now build the SimpleNGL demo, this is a simple demo that shows how to use NGL to draw a simple teapot.
git clone https://github.com:/NCCA/SimpleNGL
cd SimpleNGL/
mkdir build
cd build/
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=~/NGL ..
cmake --build .
./SimpleNGL
The SDLNGL demo requires the SDL2 libraries to be installed, you can do this with vcpkg
cd ~/vcpkg
./vcpkg install sdl2 sdl2-imageNow we can clone and build the demo
git clone https://github.com:/NCCA/SDLNGL ~/SDLNGL
cd ~/SDLNGL/
mkdir build
cd build/
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake -G Ninja ..
cmake --build .
./SDLNGL
#
To make life easier we can add the following environment variables into our .bashrc file, this will allow us to run the demos without having to set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and other variables each time.
export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH:~/NGL
export CMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=~/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmakeonce this is added (you should be able to type code ~/.bashrc if VSCode is installed) you can reload the file with source ~/.bashrc and then build the demos without having to set the environment variables each time.