GLUTMAINLOOP(3)

💖 GLUTMAINLOOP(3) — the glow-up edition 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this is literally the function that keeps your whole OpenGLUT app alive. it's from the OpenGLUT family, specifically the mainloop branch of the family tree 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

glutMainLoop — the standard GLUT event loop entry point. yes, THE entry point. main character energy only 👑

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🌸 LIBRARY 🌸

OpenGLUT — mainloop

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

#include <openglut.h>

void
glutMainLoop(void);

that's it. that's the whole vibe. no args, no return value, just vibes and an infinite loop 💅

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so like, this is the main driving force for an event-driven OpenGLUT program. it's the engine, the heartbeat, the girlboss of the whole operation fr fr.

what it does all day is alternate between two things:

1. calling glutMainLoopEvent() to process pending events 🔥
2. then either sleeping 😴 or calling your idle function (peep glutIdleFunc() for that one)

and it just... keeps doing that. over and over. iconic behavior honestly.

now here's the tea ☕ — this function can return. like, it's physically capable of it. BUT: GLUT's version of this function never returned. ever. and if you're on OpenGLUT and you want OpenGLUT's version to return, you must do special things to cause that. so don't just assume it'll come back to you, bestie 😭

also, a lil note about the docs themselves: the cross-reference section for this function's documentation should ideally contain every single callback... but that list would be tediously long and super prone to omissions, so like. we're not doing that. respect the choice honestly 💀

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⚠️ CAVEATS ⚠️

okay so this one is for the OpenGLUT developers — internal documentation vibes only: it runs until the ExecState changes to GLUT_EXEC_STATE_STOP.

that's the exit condition. that's the one thing that stops the ride. no cap.

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💀 BUGS 💀

ngl, talking to other message systems (like, say, network layers) can be a bit bothersome under the GLUT event model. just a lil friction. a lil awkwardness. it's giving "we don't really do that here" 🙈

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• glutMainLoopEvent(3)
• glutLeaveMainLoop(3)
• glutIdleFunc(3)

go read those, they're all part of the same friend group 🫶

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one's UNDATED and honestly? UNTITLED() — the manpage said so itself, not me 💜