

Mesa 11.2 is branching soon and it's looking like OpenGL 4.2 will probably not even be reached in time for this next Mesa version, but hopefully we will get to OpenGL 4.2~4.3 by the summer. Once this code lands, ARB_compute_shader, ARB_framebuffer_no_attachments, ARB_internalformat_query2, ARB_robust_buffer_access_behavior, ARB_shader_image_size, and ARB_shader_storage_buffer_object (except Nouveau NVC0) are the extensions still need to land in mainline Mesa before there will be OpenGL 4.3 support amongst the Gallium3D drivers. This extension is about providing support for multi-dimensional arrays / arrays of arrays. The enablement comes via a set of five patches sent out on Sunday. Thanks to work by David Airlie, everything is getting squared away so that this OpenGL 4.3 extension can be enabled for all Gallium3D drivers supporting GLSL 1.30. This "AoA" code finally landed in Mesa last year with initial support for the Intel driver. The ARB_arrays_of_arrays support for core Mesa was originally crowd-funded work by developer Timothy Arceri. It's looking like hopefully we'll see OpenGL ES 3.1 support finished this year in Mesa, which could potentially mean the September release of Mesa 10.7 becoming Mesa 11.0 along with OpenGL 4.2~4.3 desktop support also being a likely contender.David Airlie has been putting out some ARB_arrays_of_arrays patches this weekend for Mesa that implement this OpenGL 4.3 extension for all Gallium3D drivers supporting GLSL 1.30.

SmartSystemMenu is a portable utility that will extend the system menu of all windows in the host system. Included, there's now a MESA_GLES_VERSION_OVERRIDE environment variable if wishing to force your Mesa OpenGL ES support level to higher than what it technically supports - for testing purposes. Clipboard Master is a feature-rich free clipboard manager for copying, pasting, organizing, and storing images, files, or folders from within any Windows program. It's other prep work for GLES 3.1 in Mesa. Ian Romanick of Intel today meanwhile posted Remainder of GLES3.1 foundation work. Most of these OpenGL extensions have been started but not yet completed. As of writing this article, the outstanding OpenGL ES 3.1 extensions still needed to be finished for Mesa include ARB_arrays_of_arrays, ARB_compute_shader, ARB_framebuffer_no_attachments, ARB_shader_image_load_store, ARB_shader_image_size, and ARB_shader_storage_buffer_object. Intel developers have been working hard on GLES 3.1 enablement in Mesa but it didn't make it for Mesa 10.6. That work is getting closer to finally being realized.


Intel developers in particular have been trying to wrap-up OpenGL ES 3.1 support within Mesa.
