Mesa Receives Some OpenGL 3 Love

OpenGL 3.0 was announced in the summer of 2007 and since then we have seen the subsequent releases of the 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 specifications. Just last week there was even the release of OpenGL 4.0. The proprietary Linux graphics drivers have picked up support for these latest industry standard specifications, but it hasn't been smooth sailing in the open-source world.

It was just last year -- two years after the OpenGL 3.0 spec was ratified -- that a few OGL3 extensions appeared within the core part of the Mesa 3D stack. However, the state of OpenGL 3 in Mesa is still sad with many of its features (and for the respective GL Shading Language) updates not yet being implemented.

An OpenGL 3.1/3.2 state tracker for Gallium3D has been promised but not yet delivered. Gallium3D right now only has state tracker coverage support up to OpenGL 2.1.

Fortunately, it looks like Brian Paul has begun pushing greater OpenGL 3.x support within Mesa. While being added to core Mesa with it being along the lines of infrastructure work, and not anything to immediately benefit any of the DRI hardware drivers, this morning there are several "GL3" related commits. These commits from today include:

- mesa: added GL3 ContextFlags field and query code
- mesa: added GL3 buffer attachment aliases
- mesa: added new GL3 buffer object queries
- mesa: added GL3 query for GL_TEXTURE_SHARED_SIZE

Once the OpenGL 3.x support is complete, it will be released as Mesa 8.0. The latest stream of Git commits for Mesa can be monitored from their cgit log.