Mesa 23.1 Provides Improved EGL Implementation For Haiku

While the open-source Mesa 3D drivers are most well known for use on Linux, they are used by other platforms too like Haiku, the BSDs, and even Microsoft Windows with WSL and the like. For those making use of the Mesa 3D drivers on the BeOS-inspired Haiku operating system to enjoy OpenGL support, merged for Mesa 23.1 is an improved EGL implementation for that platform.

Merged recently to Mesa 23.1 is implementing the Haiku driver over Gallium3D and removing the old "HGL" code.

Prominent Haiku developer "X512" explained:

Make EGL actually functional on Haiku and use it with conjunction to glvnd driver loader instead of Haiku custom HGL driver loader.

BitmapHook is currently used as EGL window surface. It is a temporary solution until proper Haiku windowing system integration API will be designed.

This EGL implementation works directly on to of Gallium and it don't use DRI layer. I would like to hear suggestions about Gallium integration code improvements/fixes.

The code was merged to Mesa 23.1 via this MR for those interested in this Haiku work. Ditching the old HGL code lightened Mesa by 2.3 k lines while the new EGL + libglvnd route was just 300 lines of additional code.

Haiku-OS.org screenshot of a Haiku R1 beta.

In case you missed it from December was the Haiku R1 Beta 4 milestone with WiFi improvements, a Wayland compatibility layer, improved HiDPI display support, and many other improvements to this open-source operating system.