On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 2:13 PM, Kenneth Graunke <kenn...@whitecape.org> wrote: >> > we've already had problems where distros refused to ship newer Mesa >> > releases because radeon depended on a version of LLVM newer than the >> > one they were shipping, [...] >> >> That's news to me, can you be more specific? >> >> That sounds like basically a distro issue though, since different LLVM >> versions can be installed in parallel (and the one used by default >> doesn't have to be the newest one). And it even works if another part of >> the same process uses a different version of LLVM. > > Yes, one can argue that it's a distribution issue - but it's an extremely > painful problem for distributions. > > For example, Debian was stuck on Mesa 9.2.2 for 4 months (2013-12-08 to > 2014-03-22), and I was told this was because of LLVM versioning changes in > the other drivers (primarily radeon, I believe, but probably also llvmpipe). > > Mesa 9.2.2 hung the GPU every 5-10 minutes on Sandybridge, and we fixed that > in Mesa 9.2.3. But we couldn't get people to actually ship it, and had to > field tons of bug reports from upset users for several months. > > Gentoo has also had trouble updating for similar reasons; Matt (the Gentoo > Mesa package mantainer) can probably comment more. > > I've also heard stories from friends of mine who use radeonsi that they > couldn't get new GL features or compiler fixes unless they upgrade both Mesa > /and/ LLVM, and that LLVM was usually either not released or not available in > their distribution for a few months. > > Those are the sorts of things I'd like to avoid. The compiler is easily the > most crucial part of a modern graphics stack; splitting it out into a > separate repository and project seems like a nightmare for people who care > about getting new drivers released and shipped in distributions in a timely > fashion. > > Or, looking at it the other way: today, everything you need as an Intel or > (AFAIK) Nouveau 3D user is nicely contained within Mesa. Our community has > complete control over when we do those releases. New important bug fixes, > performance improvements, or features? Ship a new Mesa, and you're done. > That's a really nice feature I'd hate to lose.
tbh, it sounds a lot to me like if we start using LLVM more heavily/widely in mesa we should import LLVM (or at least the parts we need) into the mesa src tree.. as it is, the logistical/distro issues of LLVM have been what has scared me off the most about using it. BR, -R _______________________________________________ mesa-dev mailing list mesa-dev@lists.freedesktop.org http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/mesa-dev
