This tool tries to solve the "OpenGL" problem on nix.

Motivation

You use Nix on any distribution, and any GL application installed fails with this error:

$ program
libGL error: unable to load driver: i965_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: i965
libGL error: unable to load driver: i965_dri.so
libGL error: driver pointer missing
libGL error: failed to load driver: i965
libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

This library contains a wrapper which is able to launch GL application:

nixGL program

Installation / Usage

Clone this git repository:

git clone https://github.com/guibou/nixGL

(Optional) installation:

cd nixGL
nix-build
nix-env -i ./result

Usage:

nixGL program args

Limitations

The idea is really simple and should work reliably in most cases.

However there is still two configurations variables hardcoded in the wrapper.

• ignored: the list of all nix packages which may contain a wrong libGL.so.
• systemLibs: the list of where on the host system the libGL.so can be found.

Open a bug / pull request if this does not work on your distribution / driver.

It works with primus, but there is some artifacts.

Fundamental issue

If your program libraries depends on different version of the same library, for example, this dependency tree:

program
   libFoo-1.2
      libBar-1.4
   libTurtle-1.6
      libBar-1.2

One version or the other of libBar may be used. In practice this does not happen a lot.