I find that a lot of the time, OpenGL will show you it failed by not drawing anything. I\'m trying to find ways to debug OpenGL programs, by inspecting the transformation ma
There is also the free glslDevil: http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/glsldevil/
It allows you to debug glsl shaders extensively. It also shows failed OpenGL calls.
However it's missing features to inspect textures and off screen buffers.