> Either I don’t, or the authors of that GLEW library https://www.opengl.org/sdk/libs/GLEW/ already did that. When running on modern GPUs, the code in my repository already uses real post-3.0 OpenGL just fine, including the shaders.
Go read the extension I linked, it explains the behavior you're seeing. Also go read the tutorial I linked, it's using GLEW and shows you how to create a context.
You have a bug if your intention is to get a post-3.0 OpenGL context. Whether or not you care is up to you. You may be perfectly happy being in the compatibility bucket. I don't know. But you're not in the explicit 3.1 or later path.
> Right, but 3.1 (Intel Sandy Bridge) is.
Sandy Bridge is a 7 year old CPU. Of course it's outdated...? And D3D 10.1 is from 2007, it's also hugely outdated. You're getting anything more modern out of the hardware with D3D than you are OpenGL here. I don't even know what the argument you're trying to make is at this point.
For the systems I have in this house it’s not required, i.e. I’m getting the same OpenGL version that’s advertised by the GPU vendors.
> You need to use the method I mentioned to get real post-3.0 OpenGL.
Either I don’t, or the authors of that GLEW library https://www.opengl.org/sdk/libs/GLEW/ already did that. When running on modern GPUs, the code in my repository already uses real post-3.0 OpenGL just fine, including the shaders.
> ok, so? 4.5 isn't really outdated, either.
Right, but 3.1 (Intel Sandy Bridge) is. And 4.0 is outdated, too (Intel Ivy Bridge). Meanwhile, modern Direct3D works fine on these GPUs, 11.0 feature level 10.1, and native 11.0, respectively.