[Mesa-dev] Mesa/Gallium overall design

[Luca Barbieri]

> If you believe that it is easier to implement features on your hardware by
> straying from Gallium or Mesa interfaces, you are welcome to do so.

I don't understand what you mean.
As far as I know, the classic Mesa interfaces cover all OpenGL
features, since they don't abstract much.

The discussion is about what to do about features and cards not
currently covered by Gallium

This includes all pre-R300 Radeon hardware, and since Radeon
development hasn't yet moved to Gallium exclusively, maybe there are
also some shortcomings in the Gallium interface affecting R300+ that
are preventing r300 and r600 to be dropped in favor of r300g and r600g
(not sure about this).

The Intel drivers also appear to be in the same situation, with
classic drivers not being dropped in favor of Gallium ones, also
indicating possible Gallium shortcomings leading to this.
Nouveau is the only one that is embracing Gallium as far as possible,
going as far as having attempted Gallium drivers for fixed function
cards.

Hardware immediate vertex submission may be nVidia-specific, but it is
part of a larger class of features available from OpenGL but not
supported by Gallium.
My aim was to discuss the larger problem of how to handle this class,
rather than the possibly nVidia-specific feature that sparked the
discussion.