Getting Started With Mesa Development This Weekend

It seems more and more independent developers are interested in getting involved in Mesa open-source graphics driver development, but aren't really sure where to start or what are some easy tasks to get started.

Last weekend a new individual to the Mesa community started a new mailing list thread entitled Newbie task to get started. He explained he wanted to get involved with Mesa 3D development, but wasn't sure what he should try to tackle first. Unfortunately, the Mesa NewbieProjects Wiki page isn't the most maintained.

Fortunately, however, many Mesa developers jumped on that thread with various tips and recommendations where to get started. Ideas ranged from fixing Coverity / static checking errors, addressing compiler warnings, easy matters like replacing GLvoid with void in the code, adding simple OpenGL extensions to a hardware driver, etc. So if you've been wanting to get started in making your first patch for Mesa, I'd recommend checking out that aforelinked Mesa-dev mailing list thread for a number of comments to get motivated. For more newcomer advice for the Linux graphics driver world in general, see the recent article on Getting Involved In Linux Graphics Driver Development.