[Mesa-dev] Time to merge threaded GL dispatch? (aka glthread)

[Eero Tamminen]

Hi,

On 09.02.2017 19:14, Eric Anholt wrote:
> Ian Romanick <idr at freedesktop.org> writes:
...
>> No, it absolutely is not fine to merge.  We have never allowed such a
>> thing, and I'll be damned if I'll allow this project to start.  Things
>> that land that are known to be broken never actually get fixed.  Then we
>> have to waste time fielding bug reports and Phoronix threads because
>> users turn on the performance features and everything breaks.  It's just
>> a terrible idea.
>
> Yeah, just like how we gated the GLSL compiler until it was completely
> done (we didn't) and NIR until it was completely done (we didn't) and
> Vulkan until it was completely done (we didn't) and...

None of the features you list were purely for performance.  If it's just 
supposed to [1] improve performance and complicates the existing code, 
gate should be higher.

[1] You cannot fully trust the provided performance numbers if it's not 
functioning properly.


> Software that people care about gets fixed.  I'm also concerned that
> nobody actually cares about getting glthread working completely, given
> Marek's attitude toward piglit conformance (and my also ignoring the
> branch for the last however many years).  However, "we have never
> allowed merging broken software that's only turned on under env
> vars/configure" is totally false.  We do that regularly for big things
> we care about.


	- Eero