Re: XFree86, Mesa, Debian, and libGLU revisited
Branden Robinson wrote:
>
> [Sorry for the CC, Brian, I just wanted to make sure that people who know
> better than I can stop me before I do anything stupid]
>
> On Sun, Sep 17, 2000 at 03:01:53PM +0200, Harald Dunkel wrote:
> > I'm running XFree 4.0.1 for several days on my PC at home now.
> > There seemed to be no serious problems.
> >
> > But on building some OpenGL applications (the OpenGL hacks of
> > xscreensaver) I recognized that the GLU library is gone. Before
> > the update libGLU.so could be found in the old mesag3 package.
> > A similar problem exists for the xlibgl-dev package: The GLU
> > header files are gone.
> >
> > Shouldn't be GLU included in xlibgl1/xlibgl-dev to provide true
> > compatibility to Mesa?
>
> Yes, but here's the problem:
>
> The XFree86 source tree, which contains Mesa (libGL and libOSMesa, the
> off-screen rendering library), does *not* contain libGLU. I don't honestly
> know why this choice was originally made (I get the impression it has
> something do with libGLU being written in C++ -- no other part of the
> XFree86 source distribution is).
>
> However, a consensus has formed of late among the XFree86 developers, in
> conjunction with Brian Paul (the mastermind of the Mesa project), that
> libGLU should be shipped, built and installed with the rest of Mesa as part
> of the XFree86 distribution. I've corresponded with Brian on this point,
> and he suggests that the 3 libraries, libGL, libGLU, and libOSMesa, be
> shipped in one package. I see no compelling reason to do otherwise.
>
> So:
>
> + xlibosmesa* and xlibgl* will merge into xlibmesa* in (probably) the next
> XFree86 phase2 .deb release
> + libGLU will become part of xlibmesa* as soon as upstream XFree86 makes it
> available; I don't have a timeframe on this
> + Mesa will continue to be maintained separately from XFree86 itself,
> though I gather the only real difference will be that XFree86 will decide
> based on its own needs when it takes snapshots from the Mesa CVS tree; I
> don't gather that there is a real fork underway
Right.
> + Debian's Mesa packages will thus continue to be separately maintained,
> for people who don't need the DRI drivers (I don't think there is any
> functional difference between the official Mesa and XFree86 version of
> Mesa if DRI is not available -- or not used -- with your video hardware)
If you don't have 3D hardware or disable the DRI you can still use the
software-based GLX renderer (which is based on Mesa). However, you
can't
access as many extensions using software GLX as with stand-alone Mesa.
> + The off-screen rendering library, libOSMesa, is not yet available in the
> Debian Mesa packages (last I checked); this should be remedied when an
> official upstream version of Mesa is released with it (which I don't
> think has happened yet) and when the Debian package maintainer then
> releases it
Right, I haven't made libOSMesa.so part of the regular, stand-alone Mesa
disto, yet.
> Here's the practical, important part:
>
> + In the meantime, users are going to have play games behind the back of
> the packaging system to satisfy any program that requires libGLU:
>
> - retrieve the appropriate mesag3 .deb package for your architecture
> - put it in a subdirectory of /tmp (not /tmp itself)
> - dpkg-deb -x mesag3-glide2_3.2.1-1_i386.deb .
> (or whatever the .deb is named)
> - become root, and return to this directory if necessary
> - cd usr/lib
> - as root, cp *libGLU* /usr/lib
>
> People who need to compile against the libGLU headers can figure out the
> analogous steps for mesag3-dev.
>
> Sorry about this kludgey situation -- it's life on the bleeding edge. It
> will be rectified once the XFree86 sources are building libGLU.
Yes. Putting GLU into XFree86 is underway.
-Brian
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