[Mesa-dev] Mesa/Gallium overall design

[Luca Barbieri]

Has Intel or anyone else considered open sourcing their Windows
DirectX 10 user mode DDI drivers, porting them to Gallium and filling
in the missing GL-specific functionality from the GL drivers?

That might prove easier than porting the GL drivers (the DirectX 10
design is much closer), and allows to take advantage of the Windows
codebase, which is likely to have had the benefit of much more work
done on it.

With the addition of a DX10 state tracker, you could then build Linux
and Windows drivers from the same codebase and join the driver teams,
with obvious benefits.

I think this should be the real advantage of Gallium, from the
perspective of an hardware company: coverage of all APIs (OpenGL,
X11/EXA, DirectX 10, maybe DirectX 9 too) from a single codebase.

The fact that VMware does not release their DirectX state trackers
hampers this somewhat, but they can be independently reimplemented,
and they may be willing to license them to Intel or other companies.