Intel's Mesa Drivers Add A Simple But Effective Helper For Dealing With Incomplete Bug Reports

As a result of increased bug reports where Linux users are reporting Intel graphics hangs but not including the most pertinent details like the Mesa version, the Intel Mesa drivers are now embedding the driver name and Mesa version as part of their error state.

All Intel execbufs will now have a buffer object containing the Intel driver name (Iris, ANV, i965) as well as the Mesa version / Git hash. This then is incorporated as part of the error state so for users forgetting to mention their driver version (or not readily knowing), it's included.

The merge request adding this to the Intel drivers was merged on Wednesday for Mesa 20.2-devel after being open for four months. The merge request does note of possible future additions like including the DRIRC options in use as well for helping to analyze the error state without depending upon the user providing all the details or knowing that information in some cases.

In the code review for this "driver identifier" addition, others called this an interesting idea and hope to see it implemented by more Mesa drivers.