[Mesa-dev] Mesa (shader-work): glsl: introduce ir_binop_all_equal and ir_binop_any_equal, allow vector cmps

[Luca Barbieri]

>  2. Compile assembly shaders to GLSL IR (possibly via Mesa IR -> GLSL IR
> translation).  This will allow support of other NV assembly extensions
> for free on more advanced GLSL hardware.  This will give better support
> for applications that use Cg.  The GLSL backend for Cg generates some
> ugly, ugly code.

How about doing the work to support Cg directly instead of that of
supporting the assembly extensions? (which may actually be easier)
nVidia for instance has a compiler that supports both Cg and GLSL.

As far as I know, only nVidia's own demos require the assembly
extensions, and everything else just use ARB_vp/fp or GLSL since
that's the only way to run on non-nVidia hardware.

Also, while NV_fragment_program_option/2 and NV_vertex_program1-3
match nVidia GeForce FX/6/7 hardware closely, NV_gpu_program4/5 don't
even have that advantage, since the later nVidia hardware is scalar
and not at all like those extensions.

That said, the idea of using a complex language like GLSL as the API
interface is one of the usual bad design decisions of OpenGL (since,
for instance, it essentially guarantees incompatibilities, and forces
everyone implementing it do a lot of unnecessary work), and it would
be much better if OpenGL just specified a binary bytecode format
(like, say, Direct3D 11), but unfortunately this is what the current
situation is.