glCreateShader 3G
glCreateShader Creates a shader object

## C Specification

GLuint `glCreateShader` GLenum shaderType

## Parameters

shaderType

  Specifies the type of shader to be created. Must be one of `GL_VERTEX_SHADER`, `GL_GEOMETRY_SHADER` or `GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER`.

## Description

`glCreateShader` creates an empty shader object and returns a non-zero value by which it can be referenced. A shader object is used to maintain the source code strings that define a shader. shaderType indicates the type of shader to be created. Three types of shaders are supported. A shader of type `GL_VERTEX_SHADER` is a shader that is intended to run on the programmable vertex processor. A shader of type `GL_GEOMETRY_SHADER` is a shader that is intended to run on the programmable geometry processor. A shader of type `GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER` is a shader that is intended to run on the programmable fragment processor.

When created, a shader object's `GL_SHADER_TYPE` parameter is set to either `GL_VERTEX_SHADER`, `GL_GEOMETRY_SHADER` or `GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER`, depending on the value of shaderType.

## Notes

Like buffer and texture objects, the name space for shader objects may be shared across a set of contexts, as long as the server sides of the contexts share the same address space. If the name space is shared across contexts, any attached objects and the data associated with those attached objects are shared as well.

Applications are responsible for providing the synchronization across API calls when objects are accessed from different execution threads.

## Errors

This function returns 0 if an error occurs creating the shader object.

`GL_INVALID_ENUM` is generated if shaderType is not an accepted value.

## Associated Gets

glGetShader with a valid shader object and the parameter to be queried

glGetShaderInfoLog with a valid shader object

glGetShaderSource with a valid shader object

glIsShader

## See Also

glAttachShader, glCompileShader, glDeleteShader, glDetachShader, glShaderSource

## Copyright

Copyright 2003-2005 3Dlabs Inc. Ltd. This material may be distributed subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v 1.0, 8 June 1999. http://opencontent.org/openpub/.