GLFW简介

GLFW is a portable API (Application Program Interface) that handles operating system specific tasks related to OpenGLTM programming. While OpenGLTM in general is portable, easy to use and often results in tidy and compact code, the operating system specific mechanisms that are required to set up and manage an OpenGLTM window are quite the opposite. GLFW tries to remedy this by providing
the following functionality:
 Opening and managing an OpenGLTM window.
 Keyboard, mouse and joystick input.
 A high precision timer.
 Multi threading support.
 Support for querying and using OpenGLTM extensions.
 Image file loading support.
All this functionality is implemented as a set of easy-to-use functions, which makes it possible to write an OpenGLTM application framework in just a few lines of code. The GLFW API is completely operating system and platform independent, which makes it very simple to port GLFW based OpenGLTM applications to a variety of platforms.
Currently supported platforms are:
 Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/.NET Server.
 Unix or Unix-like systems running the X Window SystemTM, e.g. Linux  IRIX
FreeBSD SolarisTM, QNX and Mac OS X.
 Mac OS X (Carbon)1

 

简而言之:glfw是一个便携式API，着力于操作系统和opengl之间的调度。

它的做要功能有:
窗口管理

键盘，鼠标，游戏操纵杆的输入处理

高精度定时器

多线程支持

支持opengl查询和扩展

支持图形载入。

当然了也是跨平台的。