docs/osmesa.rst

   1 Off-screen Rendering
   2 ====================
   3
   4 Mesa's off-screen interface is used for rendering into user-allocated
   5 memory without any sort of window system or operating system
   6 dependencies. That is, the GL_FRONT colorbuffer is actually a buffer in
   7 main memory, rather than a window on your display.
   8
   9 The OSMesa API provides three basic functions for making off-screen
  10 renderings: OSMesaCreateContext(), OSMesaMakeCurrent(), and
  11 OSMesaDestroyContext(). See the Mesa/include/GL/osmesa.h header for more
  12 information about the API functions.
  13
  14 The OSMesa interface may be used with any of three software renderers:
  15
  16 #. llvmpipe - this is the high-performance Gallium LLVM driver
  17 #. softpipe - this it the reference Gallium software driver
  18 #. swrast - this is the legacy Mesa software rasterizer
  19
  20 There are several examples of OSMesa in the mesa/demos repository.
  21
  22 Building OSMesa
  23 ---------------
  24
  25 Configure and build Mesa with something like:
  26
  27 ::
  28
  29    meson builddir -Dosmesa=gallium -Dgallium-drivers=swrast -Ddri-drivers=[] -Dvulkan-drivers=[] -Dprefix=$PWD/builddir/install
  30    ninja -C builddir install
  31
  32 Make sure you have LLVM installed first if you want to use the llvmpipe
  33 driver.
  34
  35 When the build is complete you should find:
  36
  37 ::
  38
  39    $PWD/builddir/install/lib/libOSMesa.so  (swrast-based OSMesa)
  40    $PWD/builddir/install/lib/gallium/libOSMsea.so  (gallium-based OSMesa)
  41
  42 Set your LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to $PWD/builddir/install to use the
  43 libraries
  44
  45 When you link your application, link with -lOSMesa