OpenGL Ray Tracer

Running

The project is built most easily using the Nix package manager. Using Nix, we can compile this project without installing anything:

nix --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" build github:ruby0b/opengl-ray-tracer

The result will be a single executable, located in ./result/bin/ray-tracer. Check out the command line parameters with --help.

If you are not on a NixOS system, chances are that the binary will fail to run due to Nix-related graphics driver issues. We can use nixGL to work around this though:

NIXPKGS_ALLOW_UNFREE=1 nix --extra-experimental-features "nix-command flakes" run --override-input nixpkgs nixpkgs/nixos-23.11 --impure github:nix-community/nixGL -- result/bin/ray-tracer

Development

You can enter a development shell with all the dependencies you need using:

nix develop

If you're using VSCode, install the clangd extension and disable the default C++ intellisense. For clangd to work, you'll need to generate build/compile_commands.json:

nix develop --command sh -c 'rm -rf build; cmake -B build'