[Mesa3d-dev] [PATCH] Provide dri shared library building and SDK installation.

[Keith Whitwell]

I haven't been following this very closely, so apologies if I'm going
over established ground.

This patch appears to create new libraries from some subset of Mesa's
internals.  At a guess you're selecting some internal interface(s)
within mesa to become the public API of those libraries?  I'm pretty
sure that's not something we're trying to achieve in this project.

We have public APIs which we respect and implement, and which are
maintained and evolved under the Khronos umbrella.

We have a strong driver-level interface (ie gallium) which we benefit
greatly from being rev as fast and as hard as we can, to adapt to our
evolving understanding of the problem space.  We really don't want to
subject that interface to the strictures that come with becoming a
public API or ABI.

We have a third interface, the Mesa driver interface, which may appear
relatively stable, but which is more accurately described as
neglected, veering towards deprecated.  The shortcomings of this
interface, in particular its porous nature and inappropriate
abstraction level, were major catalysts provoking the development of
gallium.  Those shortcomings would also make it less than appropriate
as a public API.  At some point in the future, that interface will
either roar back into rapid evolution or truly be deprecated in favour
of either gallium or a low-level, legacy-free GL3/4 subset from
Khronos.

I can't easily tell from your patch what interfaces these new
libraries have, or what expectations there would be for maintaining
compatibility on those interfaces going forward.  I'd like to see that
spelled out explicitly.  Without investigating further, I can say I'm
not aware of any interface within Mesa which we'd be happy to promote
to a public interface, nor one which we'd be happy to accept extra
restrictions on in terms of compatibility.

Keith

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 11:59 PM, Luc Verhaegen <libv at skynet.be> wrote:
> Patch cherry-picked from my dri-sdk-7.8 branch against current head
> (edb5253dfa). An earlier full build through of all drivers (except
> nouveau, i will play with its expansive libdrm dependencies later)
> showed it to be an exact match still.
>
> This patch, while not harming or hampering anything or anyone, gives us
> the ability to maintain and build DRI drivers out of tree for those so
> inclined. Build system additions only. No adverse effects. Everybody
> wins.
>
> I intend to provide changes as needed, I hope to at least manage to
> maintain released versions in the long term.
>
> For those wanting a test run, please check out the 7.8 version of the
> SDK and the drivers in my cgit.freedesktop.org repos.
>
> Luc Verhaegen.
>
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