BuGLe

I recently had the pleasure of working with BuGLe, a powerful tool for OpenGL debugging. This software functions as a wrapper library that is inserted between your program and OpenGL. Additionally, BuGLe includes a debugger called gldb that has various features such as setting breakpoints and examining backtraces. You can also utilize the tool to examine OpenGL state, enable and disable filters, and even drop into gdb to get a clear idea of what is going wrong.

One of the standout features of BuGLe is how it displays GLenums and pointers. GLenums are shown by name, and pointers are followed to the correct number of elements. As an example, here is an extract from a log generated by an application I am writing:

-stats.fps: 22.671
-stats.fragments: 52335
-stats.triangles: 99732
-trace.call: glXSwapBuffers(0x8117720, 0x01c00021)
-trace.call: glXMakeCurrent(0x8117720, 0x01c00021, 0x8444800) = 1
-trace.call: glBindBufferARB(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 1)
-trace.call: glMapBufferARB(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, GL_READ_WRITE) = 0x45c3c000
-trace.call: glUnmapBufferARB(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER) = GL_TRUE
-trace.call: glBindBufferARB(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0)
-trace.call: glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT)
-trace.call: glLoadMatrixd(0xbfffe610 -> { { 0, -0.29661, 1.22295, 0 }, { 1.22295, 0, 0, 0 }, { 0, 1.18644, 0.305739, 0 }, { 0.037888, 1.61781, -1.52576, 1 } })
-trace.call: glActiveTextureARB(GL_TEXTURE0)
-trace.call: glTexEnvfv(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_COLOR, 0xbfffe5d0 -> { 0.778524, 0.778524, 0.569631, 0 })
-trace.call: glGetIntegerv(GL_MAX_TEXTURE_UNITS, 0xbfffe688 -> 4)
-trace.call: glBindBufferARB(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 1)
-trace.call: glVertexPointer(3, GL_FLOAT, 32, (nil))

BuGLe is an exceptional tool that is user-friendly and offers a range of fantastic features to make OpenGL debugging smoother and easier.