[Mesa-dev] Can't get OpenGL 3.x inside VMware Workstation 12 (Ubuntu guest)

[Brian Paul]

On 11/11/2015 10:44 AM, Emil Velikov wrote:
> On 11 November 2015 at 16:48, Brian Paul <brianp at vmware.com> wrote:
>> On 11/11/2015 08:44 AM, Emil Velikov wrote:
>
>>>
>>> I have seen similar type of documents in the past, most of which going
>>> out of date very quickly due to distribution changes and/or others.
>>> Wondering how you'll feel about "check your distro and add svga to the
>>> gallium-drivers array" style of instructions ?
>>
>>
>> I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you're saying there.  Can you
>> elaborate?
>>
>>
> Rather than walking through the requirements, configure and make/make
> install steps, just forward people to the distro specific wiki on "how
> to build mesa/kernel" and explicitly mention the differences:
> mesa:
> - XA must be enabled: --enable-xa
> - svga must be listed in the gallium drivers: --with-gallium-drivers=svga...
>
> kernel:
>   - Set DRM_VMWGFX
>
> others...

I guess I've never seen those wikis.  I'd have to search for them, but I 
really don't have the time now.

We actually have an in-house shell script that installs all the pre-req 
packages, pulls the git trees, builds and installs for a variety of 
guest OSes.  But it has some VMware-specific stuff that I'd have to trim 
out before making public.


>
> Related: does the upstream [1] vmwgfx module work well when combined
> with upstream core drm across different versions ? Considering how
> well Thomas is handling upstreaming shouldn't the module from the
> kernel be recommended ?

Either should be fine at this point but the build instructions cover the 
case of one having an older distro that may not have the GL3-enabled 
kernel module already.


>
> For example some of us had nasty experiences where versions of vmware
> player/workstation ships/builds/uses kernel modules which "clash" with
> the ones already bundled in the kernel package. With "clash" - there
> is no guarantee whether the upstream or downstream module gets loaded,
> and due difference in the symbols provided one does encounter
> "function_foo() error Invalid argument" type of messages, and
> ultimately things just not working.

I don't think I've ever had much trouble with that.  The host-side Linux 
kernel modules aren't really my area so I can't say much about that.

-Brian