N39: glutin

content/news/039/index.md

@@ -134,6 +134,66 @@ it hit version 0.28 which added new functionality and improved existing:
 
 ## Library Updates
 
+### [glutin]
+
+[glutin] ([GitHub][glutin-github], [docs.rs][glutin-docs])
+by [@kchibisov] ([rust-windowing]) is a crate that is well known for
+being an OpenGL platform initialization on top of winit.
+
+With glutin `0.30`, this is no longer the case. The crate was
+rewritten from scratch and redesigned around [raw-window-handle], so
+you don't need [winit] anymore in this equation and it could be used with
+whatever windowing library you prefer, like [smithay-client-toolkit] for
+pure Wayland clients.
+
+Given everything is based on raw-window-handle the crate is more low-level
+now and also exposes the underlying platform API like `EGL`, `GLX`, and `WGL`
+directly. There's already an interest of using glutin to handle `EGL` in
+projects like [Smithay].
+
+Previously with glutin `0.29` everything was based around the single
+[`WindowedContext`] - while this was convinient for some users and worked on
+desktop platforms, that fact was a major pain on Android where the window
+gets destroyed over time, but its context could be kept around, or when you
+fail to query configuration with supplied parameters leading to chain creating
+`WindowedContext` and causing delays on startup. For example, you can create all
+the objects and then fail on setting vsync, forcing you to start over.
+
+None of that is an issue with glutin `0.30.0`. The API is now structured around
+`Display`, `Context`, `Surface`, and `Config`, where every object is built from
+the `Display` and has its own role which is close to what you usually can find
+in OpenGL native rendering platforms specifications, like `EGL`.
+
+Unfortunatelly, the new API isn't as easy to bootstrap as it was with old
+glutin, especially when you want to use platforms like `WGL` and `GLX`.
+However, if you're using winit there will be (or is already) a special crate
+[glutin-winit] to handle platform-specific `Display` creation for you.
+
+To see the new API in action, look at the [glutin examples]. They
+should work on desktop platforms and Android (you may even notice that there's
+no special code for Android at all!).
+
+One note to add, is that iOS is **no longer** supported, but only due to
+lack of maintainers for it. If you rely on iOS support in glutin, the devs 
+encourage you to help contributing to it upstream, or you'd stuck with glutin
+`0.29` which won't receive any updates anymore.
+
+For further info, check out the [winit matrix room](https://matrix.to/#/#winit:matrix.org)
+or [#winit](https://web.libera.chat/#winit) at libera.chat.
+
+[glutin]: https://crates.io/crates/glutin
+[glutin examples]: https://github.com/rust-windowing/glutin/tree/master/glutin_examples
+[glutin-winit]: https://github.com/rust-windowing/glutin/pull/1517
+[winit]: https://crates.io/crates/winit
+[Smithay]: https://github.com/smithay/smithay
+[`WindowedContext`]: https://docs.rs/glutin/0.29.1/glutin/type.WindowedContext.html
+[smithay-client-toolkit]: https://crates.io/crates/smithay-client-toolkit
+[glutin-github]:  https://github.com/rust-windowing/glutin
+[raw-window-handle]: https://crates.io/crates/raw-window-handle
+[glutin-docs]: https://docs.rs/glutin
+[@kchibisov]: https://github.com/kchibisov
+[rust-windowing]: https://github.com/rust-windowing
+
 ### [presser]
 
 [presser] ([GitHub][presser-github], [docs.rs][presser-docs])