Test if extension is available

Posted Tuesday, 1 April, 2008 - 15:26 by teichgraf in

Programming Support

Hello,

I am asking me right now, if OpenTK has a helper method, which tests if a certain OpenGL extension is available?

Something like:

public static bool IsExtAvailable(string ext)
{
   return GL.GetString(StringName.Extensions).Contains(ext);
}

Or is there another way to test for extensions at runtime?

Comments

Assuming this ain't an april fool's joke and the question is serious: This is covered by the functions GL.SupportsExtension / GL.SupportsFunction

It might be useful to create an overload with enum as parameter, instead of a string. (to avoid typing errors) Anyone besides objarni votes for that idea? ;)

Thanks!
I looked for Is* or Has* kind of method signature. But I didn't found GL.SupportsExtension. Sorry!

An enum overload would be really useful.

Yeah, I second the enum overload. That would be very useful, if just for the intellisense.

i agree ... an enum overload would be helpful

I STRONGLY DISAGREEE!!!!

Fooled ya! ;)

It's known that you're into coder pr0n and overloads like this are your thing ;)

thanks really cool demo given 256 bytes :)

Something like this would work:

// types found in Source/Bind/Specifications/GL2/gl.tm
enum Extension
{
    VERSION_1_2,
    VERSION_1_3,
    ...
    EXT_texture_integer
}
 
public static bool SupportsExtension(Extension e)
{
    return SupportsExtension(e.ToString());
}

A prettier solution would be to use a struct with constants:

struct Extension
{
    public const string Version12 = "VERSION_1_2";
    public const string Version13 = "VERSION_1_3";
}

The latter could be added to the generator, although it might be simpler to write by hand (but more boring).

Also happy April's fool!

Mhmm I don't know why the discussion moved to pm's *apologizes*

Imo both solutions have their benefits:

Enum
The advantage of easy iteration through all extensions for debugging purposes.
```
public enum Extension: uint
{
    VERSION_1_2 =0,
    VERSION_1_3,
    ...
    EXT_texture_integer,
    Last, // reserved for marking the highest/last value in the enum
}
```
The disadvantage of this is obviously that it's not as nice as Extension.Version12 and not "C#-ish" (C) objarni. But on the other hand, it's exactly the token name that GL expects.

Example:
GL.SupportsExtension( Extension.WGL_ARB_randomly_chosen_token ); // new enum overload
GL.SupportsExtension( Extension.WGL_ARB_randomly_chosen_token.ToString() ); // string param
Struct
Nicer to handle, but requires some extra thinking/understanding how Extension.WglArbRandomlyChosenToken translates into WGL_ARB_randomly_chosen_token.

Example:
GL.SupportsExtension( Extension.WglArbRandomlyChosenToken ); // string param

I have no clear favorite, but if you put a pistol to my head I'd say 1) because it's closer to the C API.

Sleeping over it, I created the function using an enum for now. Imo it will be much less confusing to the user, since it's more logical to query for presence of GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object than GLArbVertexBufferObject. It should also aid in looking up the spec on opengl.org, or googling for tutorials.

The overload can be used like this:

GL.SupportsExtension( GL.Extension.WGL_ARB_randomly_chosen_token ); // new enum overload
GL.SupportsExtension( GL.Extension.WGL_ARB_randomly_chosen_token.ToString() ); // string param
 
// also nice, we can iterate through all available GL extensions and dump that into a debug log.
for ( int i = 0; i < (int) GL.Extension.Last; i++ )
{
  Debug.WriteLine( ( (GL.Extension) i ).ToString( ) + " available: " + GL.SupportsExtension( (GL.Extension) i ) );
}

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Test if extension is available

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