[Mesa-dev] [PATCH shaderdb] run: shader program file created via GetProgramBinary (v5)

[Matt Turner]

On Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 5:56 PM, Dongwon Kim <dongwon.kim at intel.com> wrote:
> With optin '-b', shader-db now generates a shader program binary file
> using GetProgramBinary(). This shader program binary can be loaded via
> ProgramBinary() to be executed by an application later.

Help me understand your use case. Why the automatic shader-cache
insufficient? Are the shader binaries you plan to cache going to be on
read-only storage?

I see https://github.com/intel/IA-Hardware-Composer/pull/292 -- in it
you asked whether the automatic shader cache is persistent across
reboots. Yes, it is.

I don't want to support loading shader binaries generated from a
different Mesa. That would require a lot of work on our part and would
be a difficult thing to test. I'm concerned that adding support for
generating shader binaries in shader-db will encourage people to do
just that instead of using the automatic cache and then push us to
support old binaries.

Maybe generating shader binaries is the best solution, but it's hard
for me to say without understanding the requirements.