Mesa Receives Some OpenGL 3 Love

[pejakm]

If someone here is using Arch Linux - I have a great PKGBUILD script for mesa-git, which compiles r300g driver and installs it. Switching to gallium from classic driver (and vice versa) any time you wish is very convenient: simple terminal console does the trick.

[FireBurn]

Mesa is almost a million lines of code. Nobody is going to be replacing it quickly...

But is replacing it a long term goal?

KMS replaced UMS once it became stable in the DDX driver (yes not as much code) and I'm guessing the UMS code will be ripped out of the kernel as soon as Linus lets the developers - well for Intel anyway

I'm kind of disappointed that the Nouveau folk changed their minds about using Gallium for the fixed pipeline cards. It would have been nice if eventually all cards were supported natively under Gallium

I'd really like to test Gallium and lean how to add to it. Both on the desktop and my PS3 (cell driver). Do you know a good place to start?

Also what's the Python statetracker? Also what's the difference between llvmpipe and gallivm? (The v isn't a typo)

[FireBurn]

The OpenGL (Mesa) state tracker is actually a classic Mesa driver which translates OpenGL calls into Gallium ones. (it's not said to be classic since it's rather a smart wrapper, not a device driver)



Gallium3D state tracker is nonsense. Gallium3D is the overall architecture and kinda a toolbox for writing 3D drivers. Gallium can be even considered the internal driver interface which basically splits the classic driver to several more or less separate components and reuses them for acceleration of other APIs.


The Xorg state statetracker doesn't get much (if any) testing with r300g. Why would you want to use it when you have full-featured xf86-video-ati?

-Marek

I wanted to test it.

Why test Gallium when I have mesa? Or test ChromiumOS when I have KDE. Or why would someone test Linux when they already have Windows or OSX?

It's fun trying new things and comparing to what you've already got

[bridgman]

Mesa is almost a million lines of code. Nobody is going to be replacing it quickly...

[marek]

Ah I thought Gallium was more stand alone than that.

The OpenGL (Mesa) state tracker is actually a classic Mesa driver which translates OpenGL calls into Gallium ones. (it's not said to be classic since it's rather a smart wrapper, not a device driver)

Considering that Mesa implements OpenGL, and has a Gallium3D state tracker, how more real would you want it?

Gallium3D state tracker is nonsense. Gallium3D is the overall architecture and kinda a toolbox for writing 3D drivers. Gallium can be even considered the internal driver interface which basically splits the classic driver to several more or less separate components and reuses them for acceleration of other APIs.

I've tried using the xorg state tracker before but without any luck on radong a few days ago it simply crashed X and i965g doesn't work at all either it even has the wrong name since it stopped being the modesetting driver

The Xorg state statetracker doesn't get much (if any) testing with r300g. Why would you want to use it when you have full-featured xf86-video-ati?

-Marek

[FireBurn]

Ah I thought Gallium was more stand alone than that. Was expecting it to get real OpenGL state trackers and once enough Gallium drivers existed to rip out old messa

Is there any beginners documentation for gallium, how to build it etc

I've tried using the xorg state tracker before but without any luck on radong a few days ago it simply crashed X and i965g doesn't work at all either it even has the wrong name since it stopped being the modesetting driver

It seems it's only targeted for developers just now

[bridgman]

Yep, Mesa using its Gallium3D paths *is* the OpenGL state tracker (with all the usual caveats that Mesa only implements an API similar to OpenGL). Mesa using the "classic" hardware drivers is "classic Mesa".

Gallium3D replaces the hardware driver layer, not all of Mesa.

[pingufunkybeat]

Mesa IS OpenGL, for all intents and purposes (other than the legal ones).

[FireBurn]

Considering that Mesa implements OpenGL, and has a Gallium3D state tracker, how more real would you want it?

But that isn't a real OpenGL state tracker is it? You might as well just use a mesa driver wouldn't you? I might be misunderstanding entirely

[Remco]

Considering that Mesa implements OpenGL, and has a Gallium3D state tracker, how more real would you want it?