<head><title>Mesa FAQ</title></head>
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+<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="mesa.css"></head>
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<center>
<h1>Mesa Frequently Asked Questions</h1>
-Last updated: 17 November 2004
+Last updated: 21 August 2006
</center>
<br>
information.
</p>
<p>
-Mesa 5.x supports the OpenGL 1.4 specification.
+Mesa 6.x supports the OpenGL 1.5 specification.
</p>
<h2>1.2 Does Mesa support/use graphics hardware?</h2>
<p>
-Yes. Specifically, Mesa serves as the OpenGL core for the open-source
-XFree86/DRI OpenGL drivers. See the <a href="http://dri.sf.net/">DRI
+Yes. Specifically, Mesa serves as the OpenGL core for the open-source DRI
+drivers for XFree86/X.org. See the <a href="http://dri.freedesktop.org/">DRI
website</a> for more information.
</p>
<p>
Still, Mesa serves at least these purposes:
</p>
<ul>
-<li>Mesa is used as the core of the open-source XFree86/DRI hardware drivers.
+<li>Mesa is used as the core of the open-source XFree86/X.org DRI
+ hardware drivers.
</li>
<li>Mesa is quite portable and allows OpenGL to be used on systems
that have no other OpenGL solution.
<h2>1.4 What's the difference between"Stand-Alone" Mesa and the DRI drivers?</h2>
<p>
<em>Stand-alone Mesa</em> is the original incarnation of Mesa.
-On systems running the X Window System, it does all its rendering through
-the Xlib API.
+On systems running the X Window System it does all its rendering through
+the Xlib API:
<ul>
<li>The GLX API is supported, but it's really just an emulation of the
real thing.
<h2>1.5 How do I upgrade my DRI installation to use a new Mesa release?</h2>
<p>
-You don't! A copy of the Mesa source code lives inside the XFree86/DRI source
-tree and gets compiled into the individual DRI driver modules.
-If you try to install Mesa over an XFree86/DRI installation, you'll lose
-hardware rendering (because stand-alone Mesa's libGL.so is different than
-the XFree86 libGL.so).
-</p>
-<p>
-The DRI developers will incorporate the latest release of Mesa into the
-DRI drivers when the time is right.
-</p>
-<p>
-To upgrade, either look for a new release of <a href="http://www.xfree86.org"
-target="_parent">XFree86</a> or visit the
-<a href="http://dri.sf.net" target="_parent">DRI website</a> to see
-if there's newer drivers.
+This wasn't easy in the past.
+Now, the DRI drivers are included in the Mesa tree and can be compiled
+separately from the X server.
+Just follow the Mesa <a href="install.html">compilation instructions</a>.
</p>
rendering, etc.
</p>
+<p>
+<a href="http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/361/36173.html"
+target="_parent">ClosedGL</a> is an OpenGL subset library for TI
+graphing calculators.
+</p>
+
<p>
There may be other open OpenGL implementations, but Mesa is the most
popular and feature-complete.
</a></p>
-<h2><a name="part2">2.2 Running <code>configure; make</code> doesn't Work</a></h2>
-<p>
-Mesa no longer supports GNU autoconf/automake. Why?
-<ul>
-<li>It seemed to seldom work on anything but Linux
-<li>The config files were hard to maintain and hard to understand
-<li>libtool caused a lot of grief
-</ul>
-
-<p>
-Now, Mesa again uses a conventional Makefile system (as it did originally).
-Basically, each Makefile in the tree includes one of the configuration
-files from the config/ directory.
-The config files specify all the variables for a variety of popular systems.
-</p>
-
-
-<h2><a name="part2">2.3 I get undefined symbols such as bgnpolygon, v3f, etc...</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="part2">2.2 I get undefined symbols such as bgnpolygon, v3f, etc...</a></h2>
<p>
<a name="part2">You're application is written in IRIS GL, not OpenGL.
IRIS GL was the predecessor to OpenGL and is a different thing (almost)
</a></p>
-<h2><a name="part2">2.4 Where is the GLUT library?</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="part2">2.3 Where is the GLUT library?</a></h2>
<p>
-<a name="part2">GLUT (OpenGL Utility Toolkit) is in the separate MesaDemos-x.y.z.tar.gz file.
-If you don't already have GLUT installed, you should grab the MesaDemos
-package and unpack it before compiling Mesa.
+<a name="part2">GLUT (OpenGL Utility Toolkit) is in the separate MesaGLUT-x.y.z.tar.gz file.
+If you don't already have GLUT installed, you should grab the MesaGLUT
+package and compile it with the rest of Mesa.
</a></p>
-<h2><a name="part2">2.5 What's the proper place for the libraries and headers?</a></h2>
+<h2><a name="part2">2.4 What's the proper place for the libraries and headers?</a></h2>
<p>
<a name="part2">On Linux-based systems you'll want to follow the
</a><a href="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/ABI/index.html"
version number.
</li></ul>
<p>
-After installing XFree86 and the DRI drivers, some of these files
+After installing XFree86/X.org and the DRI drivers, some of these files
may be symlinks into the /usr/X11R6/ tree.
</p>
<p>
<p>
Make sure the ratio of the far to near clipping planes isn't too great.
Look
-<a href="http://www.sgi.com/software/opengl/advanced97/notes/node18.html"
-target="_parent">
-here</a> for details.
+<a href="http://www.opengl.org/resources/faq/technical/depthbuffer.htm#0040"
+target="_parent"> here</a> for details.
</p>
<p>
Mesa uses a 16-bit depth buffer by default which is smaller and faster
will fix the problem.
</p>
+<h2>3.6 How can I change the maximum framebuffer size in Mesa's
+<tt>swrast</tt> backend?</h2>
+<p>
+These can be overridden by using the <tt>--with-max-width</tt> and
+<tt>--with-max-height</tt> options. The two need not be equal.
+</p><p>
+Do note that Mesa uses these values to size some internal buffers,
+so increasing these sizes will cause Mesa to require additional
+memory. Furthermore, increasing these limits beyond <tt>4096</tt>
+may introduce rasterization artifacts; see the leading comments in
+<tt>src/mesa/swrast/s_tritemp.h</tt>.
+</p>
+
<br>
<br>
<a name="part4">
</a><h1><a name="part4">4. Developer Questions</a></h1>
-<h2><a name="part4">4.1 How can I contribute?</a></h2>
+<h2>4.1 How can I contribute?</a></h2>
<p>
-<a name="part4">First, join the Mesa3d-dev mailing list. That's where Mesa development
-is discussed.
-</a></p>
+First, join the <a href="http://www.mesa3d.org/lists.html">Mesa3d-dev
+mailing list</a>.
+That's where Mesa development is discussed.
+</p>
<p>
-<a name="part4">The </a><a href="http://www.opengl.org/developers/documentation/specs.html" target="_parent">
+The <a href="http://www.opengl.org/documentation" target="_parent">
OpenGL Specification</a> is the bible for OpenGL implemention work.
You should read it.
</p>
</p>
-<h2>4.3 Why isn't GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc implemented in Mesa and/or the DRI drivers?</h2>
+<h2>4.3 Why isn't GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc implemented in Mesa?</h2>
<p>
The <a href="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/registry/EXT/texture_compression_s3tc.txt" target="_parent">specification for the extension</a>
indicates that there are intellectual property (IP) and/or patent issues
algorithms).
</p>
<p>
-Until we can get official permission to do so, this extension will not
-be implemented in Mesa.
+In the mean time, a 3rd party <a href=
+"http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/dri_experimental/s3tc_index.html"
+target="_parent">plug-in library</a> is available.
</p>
projects / mesa.git / blobdiff