GLSL-To-TGSI For Mesa Is Still Not Merged

Last month it was announced that the GLSL IR to TGSI translator for Mesa that avoids the use of the inefficient and old Mesa IR was ready to be merged. A month later, the code for this core Mesa improvement hasn't been pulled.

Last month when writing about the GLSL-To-TGSI translator being ready to be merged, I suspected that it wouldn't be pushed into Git master until after the branching for the Mesa 7.11 series, which took place in late June. The developer behind this code, Bryan Cain, hoped it would make it for Mesa 7.11 and said so in the Phoronix Forums. The GLSL-To-TGSI translator was not merged for Mesa 7.11 and thus won't be found until Mesa 7.12/8.0.

Even though Mesa 7.11 has been branched for a few weeks, the code is still not in master. Today an independent user asked "why not?" on the Mesa mailing list. For those wondering, one of the issues that appears to be possibly stalling the merge is that it would be harder to cherry-pick Mesa/driver fixes from master onto the 7.11 branch once this is merged. As such, Ian Romanick likes the work that has been done, but would prefer this not be merged until August once Mesa 7.11 has been released. If not, this code could complicate the back-porting of fixes and possibly delay the 7.11 release.

Regardless of when the code is merged, we're looking forward to seeing it hit master and will have benchmarks ready.

Update (12 July): Bryan Cain has now posted his response as to why this code wasn't merged yet or for Mesa 7.11.