Mesa 21.0 Aiming For Release Tomorrow With Windows DXGI Winsys, RDNA 2 Improvements

The Mesa release train once again rode off the tracks but this week looks like it will get back on track with hopes of releasing Mesa 21.0 on Thursday.

Mesa 21.0 was branched earlier than normal in the quarter with hopes of releasing by early to mid February. That didn't happen but now as we hit the middle of March it looks like this stable release is about to materialize.

Mesa normally sees weekly release candidates after branching until the official release is ready, but even that too fell off the wagon. Mesa 21.0.0-RC5 is now three weeks old and more code/fixes have been staged since that point but without seeing any new release candidate. Normally after the fourth or fifth week of release candidates, the first ".0" release is ready.

Mesa release manager Dylan Baker is working to button up the 21.0 release and mentions he is aiming to release it tomorrow (Thursday). But prior to that he is still sorting through patches for what needs to be back-ported in time for Mea 21.0.0. There are already a few comments to that mailing list post with patches that are deemed necessary, so we'll see if this release manages to make it out tomorrow or is pushed back further.

Given the tardiness of Mesa 21.0, at this stage it's not even clear if this updated Vulkan/OpenGL driver stack will make it into Ubuntu 21.04. At the moment Mesa 20.3 is still in use with Ubuntu 21.04's Hirsute repository.

When Mesa 21.0 does ship, at least there are a number of new features and improvements to this collection of open-source Linux graphics drivers.