[amavect]

I really want to statically link OpenGL and Vulkan for exactly this purpose, but neither use a wire protocol (unlike X11 or Wayland). The whole "loading library" scheme feels like hazing for any beginner graphics programmer on top of the already complex graphics APIs.

[DrFalkyn]

I know at least for OpenGL, not all graphics cards/drivers would implement the entire featureset. So there was a reasonable justification for the dynamic linking and bringing in functions one by one.

[amavect]

I think that a wire protocol could support that with a query response for supported versions and functions. The decision of dynamic linking removes the overhead of serialization, but removes the option of static linking.