"Unable to create basic Accelerated OpenGL renderer" on macOS

[j9ac9k]

Hello pyopengl folks, pyqtgraph maintainer here. Love this library, we're able to have 3d capabilities thanks to pyopengl.

We're having some CI failures, relating to openGL, and I'm hoping that you all may have some input/suggestions.

on our macOS CI platforms, we intermittently get errors like:

=================================== FAILURES ===================================
___________________ testExamples[ GLMeshItem.py - PySide2 ] ____________________
[gw0] darwin -- Python 3.7.9 /Users/runner/hostedtoolcache/Python/3.7.9/x64/bin/python


Python 3.7.9 (default, Oct 28 2020, 13:24:28) 
[Clang 11.0.0 (clang-1100.0.33.17)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> >>> ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Unable to create basic Accelerated OpenGL renderer.
Unable to create basic Accelerated OpenGL renderer.
Core Image is now using the software OpenGL renderer. This will be slow.
Fatal Python error: Segmentation fault

Current thread 0x0000000109b0cdc0 (most recent call first):
  File "/Users/runner/work/pyqtgraph/pyqtgraph/pyqtgraph/opengl/GLViewWidget.py", line 233 in paintGL
  File "<stdin>", line 12 in <module>

Failed Mesh Example Test Located in GLMeshItem.py 

I'm hoping you have some insight as to what we could try to make this process more robust, or if you all have seen this error before.

[JTFrye]

I believe that the 'Fatal Python error: Segmentation fault' is basically saying, your out of memory(RAM) due to the Accelerated OpenGL renderer failing, so it fail back on to software mode which is more memory intensive than your system can manage. So whatever mesh etc. that was going to the video memory, is now headed for RAM which choked.

Also, have a couple of weird questions. You are only running one instance of pygame at a time right? As you are 'unable to create basic Accelerated OpenGL renderer' is an 'intermittent' failures, are you instancing 'Accelerate OpenGL renderer' more than once? 'Accelerated OpenGL renderer' should only be created once at the beginning, could it be failing to create renderer because one is already open? Can we check out the code/initialization of everything. At least before I fall asleep lol.