Assume we have created a program that renders to a texture. Say the declaration is:

GLuint shadingProgram;

Assume the shader has compiled successfully and it makes use of the imageStore() funtion.

Just like textures we need to bind the target texture we wish to write to to a binding point. But we do not use texture units, we use image binding units. We also have an additional requirement to explicetly call memory barriers to ensure completion of the writing process.

So what would be a typical minimum example of writing and reading from a texture using load/store operations?

The typical scenario for using a texture would simply be:

//Create texture
glGenTextures(1, &textureID);
glBindTexture(target, textureID);
glTexImage2D(target, 0, color_format, width, height, 0,
    color_format, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, data);

glTexParameteri(target, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
glTexParameteri(target, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP_TO_EDGE);
glTexParameteri(target, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_NEAREST);
glTexParameteri(target, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST);

//load to program
glActiveTexture(texture_unit);
glBindTexture(target, textureID);
//Get the uniform location in the program and attach the texture unit
GLuint location = /*get_uniform_location*/;
glUniform1i(location,texture_unit - GL_TEXTURE0);

//Draw
render();

However image load store are somewhat different. First, they don't use texture units but image units. Second you need to manually set memory barriers yourself to ensure completion of writing stage before reading. Amgon other things.

I have read the documentation and attempted to implement things myself but It seems I am doing things wrong. I'd rather just forget about what I have tried and understand properly how this needs to be done step by step.

I want to know what a typical, minimum example use of image load stores qould be.

So creation of the image, writing to the image, reading from the image.