Chapter 1: Installation

[Prerequisites]

OpenTK is a managed library that targets the .Net 2.0 framework. To use it, you will need either the .Net or Mono runtime, plus device drivers for OpenGL (graphics), OpenAL (audio) and OpenCL (compute), depending on the parts of OpenTK you wish to use.

Most operating systems come with a version of the .Net runtime preinstalled, which means OpenTK is typically usable out of the box. In a few cases, you might need to install manually a version of .Net runtime (Windows) or the Mono runtime (Linux/Mac OS X/Windows). Any version equal to or newer than .Net 2.0 / Mono 2.0 will work fine. Earlier versions of Mono may also work, but are no longer supported. Earlier versions of .Net will not work.

Additionally, most recent operating systems come with OpenGL drivers preinstalled. For OpenAL and OpenCL drivers, you should refer to the website of your hardware vendors. [todo: add links to common hardware vendors]

Last, but not least, you will need to download the latest OpenTK release.

[Installation]

OpenTK releases are simple compressed archives. Simply extract the archive contents to a location on your disk and add OpenTK.dll as a reference to your project. You can find OpenTK.dll under the Binaries/OpenTK folder of the OpenTK archive.

Additionally, you should add OpenTK.dll.config to your project and instruct your IDE to copy this file to the output directory. This is necessary for your project to function under Linux and Mac OS X.

The following pages contain specific instructions for using or building OpenTK on different platforms.