envvars(3)

📦 version 3.1.3, in fedora 43, fedora 44

🌸 envvars(3) 🌸

okay so bestie, welcome to envvars(3) from the Library Functions Manual 💖 this is the Coin page that spills the tea on every single environment variable the library peeks at. no cap, it's a long one. hydrate first. 🥤

🎀 NAME 🎀

envvars — Miscellaneous Environment Variables ✨

💅 SYNOPSIS 💅

🦋 Variables 🦋

here's the full roster, verbatim, no edits, i promise:

   Variables
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_GLU_INFO
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_GLU_VERSION
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_FONTSUPPORT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_3DS
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_AUDIO
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_BREAK
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_CACHING
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_DL
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_IMPORT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_LISTMODULES
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_SOINPUT_FINDFILE
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_SOOFFSCREENRENDERER
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DEBUG_WRITEREFS
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_RANDOMIZE_RENDER_CACHING
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_FREETYPE2_LIBNAME
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_FORCE_FREETYPE_OFF
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_FORCE_WIN32FONTS_OFF
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_FONT_PATH
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_GLBBOX
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_GLU_LIBNAME
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_AGLGLUE_NO_PBUFFERS
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SIMAGE_LIBNAME
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_GLXGLUE_NO_GLX13_PBUFFERS
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_GLXGLUE_NO_PBUFFERS
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_ZLIB_LIBNAME
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_BZIP2_LIBNAME
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_WGLGLUE_NO_PBUFFERS
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_DONT_MANGLE_OUTPUT_NAMES
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_EXTSELECTION_SAVE_OFFSCREENBUFFER
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_FORCE_TILED_OFFSCREENRENDERING
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_GLERROR_DEBUGGING
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_IDA_DEBUG
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_OFFSCREENRENDERER_MAX_TILESIZE
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_OFFSCREENRENDERER_TILEHEIGHT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_OFFSCREENRENDERER_TILEWIDTH
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_OLDSTYLE_FORMATTING
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SEPARATE_DIFFUSE_TRANSPARENCY_OVERRIDE
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOINPUT_SEARCH_GLOBAL_DICT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOOFFSCREENRENDERER_TILEPREFIX
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SORTED_LAYERS_USE_NVIDIA_RC
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOUND_BUFFER_LENGTH
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOUND_DISABLE
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOUND_DRIVER_NAME
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOUND_ENABLE
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOUND_INTRO_PAUSE
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOUND_NUM_BUFFERS
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOUND_THREAD_SLEEP_TIME
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_OPENAL_LIBNAME
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_TEX2_LINEAR_LIMIT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_TEX2_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LIMIT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_TEX2_MIPMAP_LIMIT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_TEX2_SCALEUP_LIMIT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_TEX2_USE_GLTEXSUBIMAGE
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_MAXIMUM_TEXTURE2_SIZE
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_MAXIMUM_TEXTURE3_SIZE
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_USE_GL_VERTEX_ARRAYS
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_NORMALIZATION_CUBEMAP_SIZE
       EnvironmentVariable OIV_NUM_SORTED_LAYERS_PASSES
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_MAX_VBO_MEMORY
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_NUM_SORTED_LAYERS_PASSES
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_QUADMESH_PRECISE_LIGHTING
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_ENABLE_CONFORMANT_GL_CLAMP
       EnvironmentVariable IV_SEPARATOR_MAX_CACHES
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_AUTOCACHE_LOCAL_MAX
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_AUTOCACHE_LOCAL_MIN
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_AUTOCACHE_REMOTE_MAX
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_AUTOCACHE_REMOTE_MIN
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_AUTO_CACHING
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_ENABLE_VBO
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_VBO
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_VBO_MAX_LIMIT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_VBO_MIN_LIMIT
       EnvironmentVariable COIN_SOOFFSCREENRENDERER_ALLOW_RESOURCEHOG
       EnvironmentVariable SO_DRAGGER_DIR
       EnvironmentVariable SO_SHADER_DIR
       EnvironmentVariable COINDIR

💫 Detailed Description 💫

so basically, you can poke at a bunch of Coin's runtime behaviour just by setting environment variables to some value 🫶 most of these lil guys exist for debugging and problem-workaround purposes, but a few of them are here to tell Coin where to find its external resource files. that's it, that's the vibe.

and here we're setting up a list of some of the environment variables Coin will check for, and that can alter behavior because of them. 💅

🎧 Scene Graph Profiler 🎧

the scene graph profiler subsystem uses the following environment variables:

COIN_PROFILER
COIN_PROFILER_OVERLAY

a whole lot of other environment variables will also affect the profiling, and listing them all would be tedious 😭 most useful is perhaps the IV_SEPARATOR_MAX_CACHES variable for disabling caching, plus those that disable features like vertex arrays and frame buffer objects — but using these will of course cause you to profile special cases that may not be as important as you might think. so like. be mindful, bestie. 🧠

🦋 Variable Documentation 🦋

each entry below is listed in the original as EnvironmentVariable + the name (that's just the type tag), so here they are as headings, one per variable, in order, with all their notes intact. 👑

`COIN_DEBUG_GLU_INFO`

`COIN_DEBUG_GLU_VERSION`

`COIN_DEBUG_FONTSUPPORT`

`COIN_DEBUG_3DS`

`COIN_DEBUG_AUDIO`

`COIN_DEBUG_BREAK`

`COIN_DEBUG_CACHING`

`COIN_DEBUG_DL`

`COIN_DEBUG_IMPORT`

`COIN_DEBUG_LISTMODULES`

`COIN_DEBUG_SOINPUT_FINDFILE`

`COIN_DEBUG_SOOFFSCREENRENDERER`

`COIN_DEBUG_WRITEREFS`

`COIN_RANDOMIZE_RENDER_CACHING`

`COIN_FREETYPE2_LIBNAME`

`COIN_FORCE_FREETYPE_OFF`

`COIN_FORCE_WIN32FONTS_OFF`

`COIN_FONT_PATH`

`COIN_GLBBOX`

if the environment variable COIN_GLBBOX is set to 1, rendering action traversals will apply a bbox action before rendering 🔥 this makes sure bounding box caches are updated — which you need for view frustum culling. the default Quarter/SoQt/SoWin/SoXt viewers will handle this at their end (which is the proper way to do it, respectfully), so we don't do this by default. 💅

`COIN_GLU_LIBNAME`

`COIN_AGLGLUE_NO_PBUFFERS`

`COIN_SIMAGE_LIBNAME`

`COIN_GLXGLUE_NO_GLX13_PBUFFERS`

`COIN_GLXGLUE_NO_PBUFFERS`

`COIN_ZLIB_LIBNAME`

`COIN_BZIP2_LIBNAME`

`COIN_WGLGLUE_NO_PBUFFERS`

`COIN_DONT_MANGLE_OUTPUT_NAMES`

`COIN_EXTSELECTION_SAVE_OFFSCREENBUFFER`

`COIN_FORCE_TILED_OFFSCREENRENDERING`

`COIN_GLERROR_DEBUGGING`

`COIN_IDA_DEBUG`

`COIN_OFFSCREENRENDERER_MAX_TILESIZE`

`COIN_OFFSCREENRENDERER_TILEHEIGHT`

`COIN_OFFSCREENRENDERER_TILEWIDTH`

`COIN_OLDSTYLE_FORMATTING`

`COIN_SEPARATE_DIFFUSE_TRANSPARENCY_OVERRIDE`

`COIN_SOINPUT_SEARCH_GLOBAL_DICT`

`COIN_SOOFFSCREENRENDERER_TILEPREFIX`

`COIN_SORTED_LAYERS_USE_NVIDIA_RC`

`COIN_SOUND_BUFFER_LENGTH`

`COIN_SOUND_DISABLE`

`COIN_SOUND_DRIVER_NAME`

`COIN_SOUND_ENABLE`

`COIN_SOUND_INTRO_PAUSE`

`COIN_SOUND_NUM_BUFFERS`

`COIN_SOUND_THREAD_SLEEP_TIME`

`COIN_OPENAL_LIBNAME`

`COIN_TEX2_LINEAR_LIMIT`

`COIN_TEX2_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LIMIT`

`COIN_TEX2_MIPMAP_LIMIT`

`COIN_TEX2_SCALEUP_LIMIT`

`COIN_TEX2_USE_GLTEXSUBIMAGE`

`COIN_MAXIMUM_TEXTURE2_SIZE`

`COIN_MAXIMUM_TEXTURE3_SIZE`

`COIN_USE_GL_VERTEX_ARRAYS`

`COIN_NORMALIZATION_CUBEMAP_SIZE`

`OIV_NUM_SORTED_LAYERS_PASSES`

`COIN_MAX_VBO_MEMORY`

`COIN_NUM_SORTED_LAYERS_PASSES`

`COIN_QUADMESH_PRECISE_LIGHTING`

`COIN_ENABLE_CONFORMANT_GL_CLAMP`

`IV_SEPARATOR_MAX_CACHES`

you can use this to tune the number of display list caches stored in each SoSeparator. the default value is 2. ✨

setting this value to 0 will disable display list caching, and this is often useful if you're experiencing weird rendering bugs which are hard to track down. 🐛 (genuinely a lifesaver, fr fr)

`COIN_AUTOCACHE_LOCAL_MAX`

`COIN_AUTOCACHE_LOCAL_MIN`

`COIN_AUTOCACHE_REMOTE_MAX`

`COIN_AUTOCACHE_REMOTE_MIN`

`COIN_AUTO_CACHING`

`COIN_ENABLE_VBO`

`COIN_VBO`

set COIN_VBO=0 to disable VBO rendering in Coin 🚫 this is useful if you suspect bugs in either Coin's VBO code or in the OpenGL driver's VBO handling. (blame the driver, it's always the driver 💀)

`COIN_VBO_MAX_LIMIT`

you can use this to set the maximum number of items (coordinates, normals, texcoords or colors) allowed when creating a vertex buffer object. on most drivers it's actually slower to render large arrays with VBOs than with normal vertex array rendering 😭

the default value is 256000, and when the number of items exceeds this, Coin will fall back to normal vertex array or immediate mode rendering.

See also: COIN_VBO_MIN_LIMIT

`COIN_VBO_MIN_LIMIT`

you can use this to set the minimum number of items (coordinates, normals, texcoords or colors) allowed when creating a vertex buffer object. it's a bit of overhead setting up the VBOs and the VBO rendering, so we avoid doing this for very small arrays. the default value is 20.

See also: COIN_VBO_MAX_LIMIT

`COIN_SOOFFSCREENRENDERER_ALLOW_RESOURCEHOG`

`SO_DRAGGER_DIR`

`SO_SHADER_DIR`

`COINDIR`

👑 Author 👑

generated automatically by Doxygen for Coin from the source code. 🤖 (yes, the robots wrote it, and they ate, lowkey)

and that's the whole page bestie, you made it to the end!! 🎉💖 this was Coin, Version 3.1.3, envvars(3), straight from the source code — go forth and set those variables, you absolute icon 👑✨

📦 where this page comes from

fedora 43: Coin3-devel 3.1.3-40.fc43 · GPL-2.0-only
fedora 43: Coin3-devel 3.1.3-40.fc43 · GPL-2.0-only
fedora 44: Coin3-devel 3.1.3-42.fc44 · GPL-2.0-only
fedora 44: Coin3-devel 3.1.3-42.fc44 · GPL-2.0-only
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on 2026-10-14: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms