Development Notes

Adding Extentions

To add a new GL extension to Mesa you have to do at least the following.

Coding Style

Mesa's code style has changed over the years. Here's the latest.

Comment your code! It's extremely important that open-source code be well documented. Also, strive to write clean, easily understandable code.

3-space indentation

If you use tabs, set them to 8 columns

Brace example:

	if (condition) {
	   foo;
	}
	else {
	   bar;
	}

Here's the GNU indent command which will best approximate my preferred style:

	indent -br -i3 -npcs --no-tabs infile.c -o outfile.c

Local variable name example: localVarName (no underscores)

Constants and macros are ALL_UPPERCASE, with _ between words

Global variables are not allowed.

Function name examples:

	glFooBar()       - a public GL entry point (in dispatch.c)
	_mesa_FooBar()   - the internal immediate mode function
	save_FooBar()    - retained mode (display list) function in dlist.c
	foo_bar()        - a static (private) function
	_mesa_foo_bar()  - an internal non-static Mesa function

Making a New Mesa Release

These are the instructions for making a new Mesa release.

Get latest source files

Use "cvs update -dAP " to get the latest Mesa files from CVS.

Verify and update version info

Create/edit the docs/RELNOTES-X.Y file to document what's new in the release. Add the new RELNOTES-X.Y file to relnotes.html. Update the docs/VERSIONS file too.

Edit configs/default and change the MESA_MAJOR, MESA_MINOR and MESA_TINY version numbers.

Make sure the values in src/mesa/main/version.h is correct.

Edit the top-level Makefile and verify that DIRECTORY, LIB_NAME and DEMO_NAME are correct.

Update the docs/news.html file and docs/download.html files.

Check in all updates to CVS.

Tag the CVS files with the release name (in the form mesa_X_Y).

Make the tarballs

Make a symbolic link from $(DIRECTORY) to 'Mesa'. For example, ln -s Mesa Mesa-6.3 This is needed in order to make a correct tar file in the next step.

Make the distribution files. From inside the Mesa directory:

	make tarballs

After the tarballs are created, the md5 checksums for the files will be computed. Add them to the docs/news.html file.

Copy the distribution files to a temporary directory, unpack them, compile everything, and run some demos to be sure everything works.

Update the website and announce the release

Follow the directions on SourceForge for creating a new "release" and uploading the tarballs.

Update the web site by copying the docs/ directory's files to /home/users/b/br/brianp/mesa-www/htdocs/

Make an announcement on the mailing lists: mesa3d-dev@lists.sf.net, mesa3d-users@lists.sf.net and mesa3d-announce@lists.sf.net