Mesa 19.2-RC1 Released But Intel Still Looking To Add OpenGL 4.6 Support

Yesterday we shared that Mesa 19.2's release process would finally be getting underway with the first release candidate expected today following the code branching. Sure enough, that process began but now prominent Intel open-source graphics developer Jason Ekstrand is looking to get the OpenGL 4.6 support into this release.

Mesa 19.2 release manager Emil Velikov branched the Mesa 19.2 code from master this evening followed by creating the first release candidate. Mesa 19.2-rc1 is now available and the plan is to issue new release candidates every week until the official release is ready to ship. Assuming they close their blocker bugs on time, the hope is to officially release Mesa 19.2.0 on 10 September.

Mesa 19.2 is packing a lot of OpenGL and Vulkan driver improvements. I'll be drafting my Mesa 19.2 feature overview soon as well as delivering more benchmarks of this quarterly Mesa3D feature release.

While Mesa 19.2 was branched, Intel Linux graphics driver developer Jason Ekstrand announced he's hoping to get OpenGL 4.6 support for their driver into this version. He wrote on the mailing list, "Sorry for the late breaking hold but I just realized that GL_ARB_gl_spirv and OpenGL 4.6 for Intel is 1 regression (I think it's not even a regression) away from landing. Can I have 24 hours?"

We'll see if the Intel OpenGL 4.6 support is allowed in tomorrow with back-porting to the Mesa 19.2 branch. Fingers crossed for finally seeing OpenGL 4.6 support out of the Intel open-source Linux graphics driver in Mesa 19.2.