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<h1>Mesa Frequently Asked Questions</h1>
-Last updated: 21 October 2004
+Last updated: 21 August 2006
</center>
<br>
-<a name="part1">
-</a><h1><a name="part1">1. High-level Questions and Answers</a></h1>
+<h1 id="part1">1. High-level Questions and Answers</h1>
-<h2><a name="part1">1.1 What is Mesa?</a></h2>
+<h2>1.1 What is Mesa?</h2>
<p>
-<a name="part1">Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification.
+Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification.
OpenGL is a programming library for writing interactive 3D applications.
-See the </a><a href="http://www.opengl.org/">OpenGL website</a> for more
+See the <a href="http://www.opengl.org/">OpenGL website</a> for more
information.
</p>
<p>
<h2>1.2 Does Mesa support/use graphics hardware?</h2>
<p>
Yes. Specifically, Mesa serves as the OpenGL core for the open-source DRI
-drivers for XFree86/X.org. See the <a href="http://dri.sf.net/">DRI
+drivers for XFree86/X.org. See the <a href="http://dri.freedesktop.org/">DRI
website</a> for more information.
</p>
<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:
+</p>
<ul>
<li>The GLX API is supported, but it's really just an emulation of the
real thing.
<li>The OpenGL library, libGL.so, contains everything (the programming API,
the GLX functions and all the rendering code).
</ul>
-</p>
<p>
Alternately, Mesa acts as the core for a number of OpenGL hardware drivers
within the DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure):
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.
<br>
-<a name="part2">
-</a><h1><a name="part2">2. Compilation and Installation Problems</a></h1>
+<h1 id="part2">2. Compilation and Installation Problems</h1>
-<h2><a name="part2">2.1 What's the easiest way to install Mesa?</a></h2>
+<h2>2.1 What's the easiest way to install Mesa?</h2>
<p>
-<a name="part2">If you're using a Linux-based system, your distro CD most likely already
+If you're using a Linux-based system, your distro CD most likely already
has Mesa packages (like RPM or DEB) which you can easily install.
-</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>2.2 I get undefined symbols such as bgnpolygon, v3f, etc...</h2>
<p>
-<a name="part2">You're application is written in IRIS GL, not OpenGL.
+You're application is written in IRIS GL, not OpenGL.
IRIS GL was the predecessor to OpenGL and is a different thing (almost)
entirely.
Mesa's not the solution.
-</a></p>
+</p>
-<h2><a name="part2">2.4 Where is the GLUT library?</a></h2>
+<h2>2.3 Where is the GLUT library?</h2>
<p>
-<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>
+GLUT (OpenGL Utility Toolkit) is no longer in the separate MesaGLUT-x.y.z.tar.gz file.
+If you don't already have GLUT installed, you should grab
+<a href="http://freeglut.sourceforge.net/">freeglut</a>.
+</p>
+
+<h2>2.4 Where is the GLw library?</h2>
+<p>
+GLw (OpenGL widget library) is now available from a separate <a href="http://cgit.freedesktop.org/mesa/glw/">git repository</a>. Unless you're using very old Xt/Motif applications with OpenGL, you shouldn't need it.
+</p>
-<h2><a name="part2">2.5 What's the proper place for the libraries and headers?</a></h2>
+<h2>2.5 What's the proper place for the libraries and headers?</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"
+On Linux-based systems you'll want to follow the
+<a href="http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ogl-sample/ABI/index.html"
target="_parent">Linux ABI</a> standard.
Basically you'll want the following:
</p>
</li><li>/usr/lib/libGL.so.1 - a symlink to libGL.so.1.xyz
</li><li>/usr/lib/libGL.so.xyz - the actual OpenGL/Mesa library. xyz denotes the
Mesa version number.
-</li><li>/usr/lib/libGLU.so - a symlink to libGLU.so.1
-</li><li>/usr/lib/libGLU.so.1 - a symlink to libGLU.so.1.3.xyz
-</li><li>/usr/lib/libGLU.so.xyz - the OpenGL Utility library. xyz denotes the Mesa
-version number.
</li></ul>
<p>
After installing XFree86/X.org and the DRI drivers, some of these files
<br>
-<a name="part3">
-</a><h1><a name="part3">3. Runtime / Rendering Problems</a></h1>
+<h1 id="part3">3. Runtime / Rendering Problems</h1>
-<h2><a name="part3">3.1 Rendering is slow / why isn't my graphics hardware being used?</a></h2>
+<h2>3.1 Rendering is slow / why isn't my graphics hardware being used?</h2>
<p>
-<a name="part3">Stand-alone Mesa (downloaded as MesaLib-x.y.z.tar.gz) doesn't have any
+Stand-alone Mesa (downloaded as MesaLib-x.y.z.tar.gz) doesn't have any
support for hardware acceleration (with the exception of the 3DFX Voodoo
driver).
-</a></p>
+</p>
<p>
-<a name="part3">What you really want is a DRI or NVIDIA (or another vendor's OpenGL) driver
+What you really want is a DRI or NVIDIA (or another vendor's OpenGL) driver
for your particular hardware.
-</a></p>
+</p>
<p>
-<a name="part3">You can run the <code>glxinfo</code> program to learn about your OpenGL
+You can run the <code>glxinfo</code> program to learn about your OpenGL
library.
Look for the GL_VENDOR and GL_RENDERER values.
That will identify who's OpenGL library you're using and what sort of
hardware it has detected.
-</a></p>
+</p>
<p>
-<a name="part3">If your DRI-based driver isn't working, go to the
-</a><a href="http://dri.sf.net/" target="_parent">DRI website</a> for trouble-shooting information.
+If your DRI-based driver isn't working, go to the
+<a href="http://dri.sf.net/" target="_parent">DRI website</a> for trouble-shooting information.
</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>
+<h1 id="part4">4. Developer Questions</h1>
-<h2><a name="part4">4.1 How can I contribute?</a></h2>
+<h2>4.1 How can I contribute?</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://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/S3TC"
+target="_parent">plug-in library</a> is available.
</p>
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