Pressing On For Mesa Floating Point Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Pressing On For Mesa Floating Point Support

On Friday it was mentioned the possibility of merging OpenGL floating point and render targets support into mainline Mesa but hiding these patented features behind a disabled-by-default build argument so those not wishing to have this support -- or are not legally permitted to use or redistribute -- could continue using Mesa without these capabilities while everyone else wishing to take advantage of it could rebuild Mesa...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTE3OA

[LiquidAcid]

libtxc_dxtn wasn't written by Marek, he's just "maintaining" it currently. The original code was written by Roland Scheidegger, which is immediately obvious from the sourcecode.

[Silverthorn]

If they don't merge it, we'll have to fork mesa. It would be inevitable. Open source should never be restricted to a few selected people. Options should be made available to include as many people as possible.

[RealNC]

If they don't merge it, we'll have to fork mesa. It would be inevitable. Open source should never be restricted to a few selected people. Options should be made available to include as many people as possible.

Wasn't that the reason XFree86 was forked and X.Org born?

[Nobu]

For somewhat easier adoption by end-users, at least there is an external S3TC library for Mesa

Nice of you to keep mentioning it, but it's likely not even an option to implement this feature (floating point support) in a library. It probably affects core code, and even if it didn't, it would probably require difficult and invasive changes to support it through an external library.

[Nobu]

It probably affects core code, and even if it didn't, it would probably require difficult and invasive changes to support it through an external library.

(Pseudo-edit: ) Of course, I'm not an expert in this area and I haven't seen the patch (because it's not on the list archive, for whatever reason), so I could be wrong.

[HokTar]

(Pseudo-edit: ) Of course, I'm not an expert in this area and I haven't seen the patch (because it's not on the list archive, for whatever reason), so I could be wrong.

It is here.

[Nobu]

Thanks...strange how they put it on a different list, but I guess I should have guessed. ^^;

Anyway, that looks like it's just a patch to add the flag which can be used to enable the patented features. I don't see the actual feature patch or a link to a branch anywhere.

By the way, Matt Turner made an appearance in the thread. Nothing spectacular, just a little comment. ;-)

[RealNC]

It is here.

This patch simply adds an option to the floating point Mesa branch.

[pvtcupcakes]

Thanks...strange how they put it on a different list, but I guess I should have guessed. ^^;

Anyway, that looks like it's just a patch to add the flag which can be used to enable the patented features. I don't see the actual feature patch or a link to a branch anywhere.

By the way, Matt Turner made an appearance in the thread. Nothing spectacular, just a little comment. ;-)

This is the branch:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~mareko/mesa/log/?h=floating2

The top 11 or so commits by Marek is what would be merged into mesa. The last 3 by Marek were already merged.
It isn't designed to be an external library as far as I can tell.