Mesa 21.0 Merges Initial Direct3D 12 Support For WSL

The latest Mesa 21.0 improvement is support for building Microsoft's Direct3D 12 Gallium3D driver code for Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL2).

Last month the initial Direct3D 12 Gallium3D code was merged into Mesa for use under Windows. What's merging today are the initial bits around support on Windows Subsystem for Linux. This includes the ability now to build the Direct3D code on Linux albeit isn't useful outside of the WSL context.

This work on the WSL side is ultimately for allowing OpenGL (and OpenCL is in progress too) for working under Windows Subsystem for Linux and in turn running it atop Windows D3D12 drivers on the host, similar to the current Mesa support under Windows for OpenGL/OpenCL atop D3D12 drivers on Windows itself for cases like Windows on ARM laptops where native GL/CL drivers may not be available. This effort is not about natively supporting Direct3D on Linux as a modern graphics API or anything like that to help Linux game porting.

The initial D3D12 WSL code merged today into Mesa 21.0-devel can be found via this merge. Overall though it remains very much a work in progress and will likely be some months before seeing a nice out-of-the-box experience, especially for the time needed to get this into WSL distribution releases.