Compile glxgears from source on Ubuntu 9.10

I decided to modify the source code of glxgears to overcome a peculiar problem. This application would not write the FPS information to file (if redirected) unless it is shutdown.

I checked the source code, glxgears.c and found the problem was simply that there was no fflush statement after the output printf:

static void
event_loop(Display *dpy, Window win)
{

....
if (t - t0 >= 5.0) {

GLfloat seconds = t - t0;
GLfloat fps = frames / seconds;
printf("%d frames in %3.1f seconds = %6.3f FPS\n",frames, seconds,
fps); //no flushing!
t0 = t;
frames = 0;

}}}

}

And so, the solution seemed simple: add the line of code that would force the output buffer to flush (fflush(stdout);) after printf and re-compile the source code.

To be able to compile glxgears.c, however one needs to install many other libraries and packages. Here are the steps that I followed to get the whole thing working.

1. glxgears is part of the Mesa Library. I downloaded th latest source code (MesaLib-7.8.2.tar.gz)


2. Start by untarring this file:

   tar -xvf MesaLib-7.8.2.tar.gz

3. Enter the directory Mesa-7.8.2 and type: ./configure --with-driver=xlib. The configuration code will now start spitting out the libraries that it needs (and which your machine does not have). Following are the libraries that I needed on my machine:


1. libdrm:

   sudo wget http://dri.freedesktop.org/libdrm/libdrm-2.4.21.tar.gz
tar -xvf libdrm-2.4.21.tar.gz
cd libdrm-2.4.21/
./configure
make
make install


2. xorg-macros:

   wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/x/xutils-dev/xutils-dev_7.5+4_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -r xutils-dev
sudo dpkg -i xutils-dev_7.5+4_i386.deb
ls /usr/share/pkgconfig/


3. dri2proto:

   wget http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual/proto/dri2proto-2.3.tar.gz
tar -xvf dri2proto-2.3.tar.gz
cd dri2proto-2.3/
./configure
make
make install


4. glproto:

   wget http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/individual/proto/glproto-1.4.12.tar.gz
tar -xvf glproto-1.4.12.tar.gz
cd glproto-1.4.12/
./configure
make


5. xxf86vm:

   sudo apt-get install libxxf86vm-dev

6. xdamage:

   sudo apt-get install libxdamage-dev

4. After all the dependencies are satisfied, ./configure --with-driver=xlib will complete and create the make file.


5. Follow it up with: make. Once you modify the Mesa-7.8.2/progs/xdemos/glxgears.c file, call ./configure --with-driver=xlib and make. The new glxgears executable will be created in the same directory as the souce code.