Linux API Reference

The Linux C++ SDK API is identical to the Windows API. Please refer to:

👉 Windows C++ API Reference

The sections below cover Linux-specific notes only.

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Linux-Specific Notes

Shared Library Loading

The SDK ships as a shared library libfacebetter.so. At runtime the OS must be able to locate it:

# Option 1: LD_LIBRARY_PATH (recommended during development)
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/facebetter-sdk/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
./your_app

# Option 2: Add to ldconfig (system-wide installation)
echo "/path/to/facebetter-sdk/lib" | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/facebetter.conf
sudo ldconfig

# Option 3: Copy to a system library directory
sudo cp libfacebetter.so /usr/local/lib/
sudo ldconfig

CMake Linkage

target_include_directories(your_target PRIVATE
    /path/to/facebetter-sdk/include
)

target_link_libraries(your_target PRIVATE
    ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/lib/libfacebetter.so
    # OpenGL dependencies
    GL
    glfw
)

OpenGL Environment

A valid OpenGL context is required. Install the necessary graphics libraries first:

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libglfw3-dev

# Fedora / RHEL
sudo dnf install mesa-libGL-devel mesa-libGLU-devel glfw-devel

For headless servers (no display), use Mesa's off-screen rendering:

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install libosmesa6-dev

external_context Field

If your application already manages an OpenGL context (e.g. via GLFW), set:

EngineConfig cfg;
cfg.external_context = true;  // Use the caller's current GL context

When true, the SDK does not create an internal GL context; all GPU calls run on the calling thread's active context.

SetRenderView Not Available

This method exists only on iOS and macOS. Do not call it on Linux.

DISPLAY Environment Variable

When using a windowed GLFW display, an X11 or Wayland server must be present:

echo $DISPLAY   # should print something like :0 or :1

For remote SSH sessions, enable X11 forwarding:

ssh -X user@host

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Full API Documentation

For the complete reference covering all methods, enumerations, and data structures, see the Windows C++ API Reference — it applies equally to Linux.