# glew

**URL:** https://discourse.vtk.org/t/glew/12952
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [December 21, 2023, 8:53pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/glew/12952 "2023-12-21T20:53:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Rafael\_Scatena](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/rafael_scatena/32/7820_2.png) [@Rafael\_Scatena](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/Rafael_Scatena)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2023, 8:53pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/glew/12952/1 "2023-12-21T20:53:29Z")

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Is it necessary to have gl/glew installed to run vtk?

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### Author: ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2023, 2:56pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/glew/12952/2 "2023-12-22T14:56:05Z")

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I believe VTK’s OpenGL support uses GLEW. While `RenderingCore` doesn’t care, any extant rendering backend will need it.

Cc: @sankhesh

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### Author: ![sankhesh](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/sankhesh/32/73_2.png) [@sankhesh](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/sankhesh)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2023, 3:41pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/glew/12952/3 "2023-12-22T15:41:32Z")

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If you’re using VTK to process data (run algorithms) and I/O, you don’t need OpenGL.  
If you’re doing any kind of rendering, then yes, you need OpenGL support.

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### Author: ![Rafael\_Scatena](https://discourse.vtk.org/user_avatar/discourse.vtk.org/rafael_scatena/32/7820_2.png) [@Rafael\_Scatena](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/Rafael_Scatena)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2023, 10:52pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/glew/12952/4 "2023-12-26T22:52:34Z")

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I have openGl installed but I guess I don’t have the glew libraries. Is it a problem?

Thank you

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### Author: ![ben.boeckel](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/ea5d25/32.png) [@ben.boeckel](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/ben.boeckel)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2023, 11:23pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/glew/12952/5 "2023-12-26T23:23:49Z")

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VTK ships with a vendored `glew` library, so you can build that instead.