OpenGL Core Profile transition and hardware-specific context creation failures

Context Compatibility Across GPU Vendors

Transitioning a rendering pipeline to the OpenGL Core Profile removes deprecated fixed-function features, requiring a strict reliance on shaders. While a development environment with high-end hardware may successfully initialize an OpenGL 4.6 context, production environments often utilize a wider variety of GPU vendors and driver versions with lower maximum supported API levels.

The use of the GLFW_OPENGL_FORWARD_COMPAT flag further restricts the available API surface by disabling deprecated functionality. If the production hardware supports a lower version than requested, or if the driver implementation of GLSL varies from the local environment, context creation may fail or shaders may fail to compile despite API compliance.

• How can a system dynamically negotiate the highest possible OpenGL version between Core and Compatibility profiles without causing context creation failure on macOS?
• What is the standard behavior for handling GLSL version mismatches when the production driver supports a lower version than the local development environment?