camera - How to avoid gimbal lock

I am trying to write code with rotates an object.

I implemented it as:

Rotation about X-axis is given by the amount of change in y coordinates of a mouse and Rotation about Y-axis is given by the amount of change in x coordinates of a mouse.

This method is simple and work fine until on the the axis coincides with Z-axis, in short a gimble lock occurs.

How can I utilize the rotation arount Z-axis to avoid gimbal lock.

Answer

The simple solution is not to store the orientation of the object as angles around axes (X-, Y-, Z-axis), as for instance in euler angles.

Store the orientation of the object as a matrix or a quaternion.

This can cause gimbal lock, using euler angles:

class Object
{
    float m_angleAxisX;
    float m_angleAxisY;
    float m_angleAxisZ;
};

No gimbal lock:

class Object
{
    matrix m_orientation;   
};

No gimbal lock either:

class Object
{

    quaternion m_orientation;   
};

Now whenever the mouse is changed, multiply m_orientation with the orientation change coming from the mouse movement each frame.