Compilation and Installation

1. Unix / X11
2. Windows
3. VMS
4. Other

• Stand-alone/Xlib mode - Mesa will be compiled as a software renderer using Xlib to do all rendering. The libGL.so library will be a self-contained rendering library that will allow you to run OpenGL/GLX applications on any X server (regardless of whether it supports the GLX X server extension). You will not be able to use hardware 3D acceleration.

  To compile stand-alone Mesa type make in the top-level directory. You'll see a list of supported system configurations. Choose one from the list (such as linux-x86), and type:

      make linux-x86
  

  This will produce libGL.so and several other libraries

• DRI/accelerated - The DRI hardware drivers for accelerated OpenGL rendering (for ATI, Intel, Matrox, etc) will be built. The libGL.so library will support the GLX extension and will load/use the DRI hardware drivers.

  Prerequisites:

  1. For Mesa 7.0.2 DRM version 2.3 is required.

     To check if you already have it, run:
     pkg-config --modversion libdrm

     You can download and install a tarball release or get the code from git with:
     git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/mesa/drm
     Then revert to the drm-2.3.0 tag with:
     git-reset --hard drm-2.3.0

  2. Relatively recent X.org release. Mesa depends on a number of X header and library files.

  Build Mesa and the DRI hardware drivers by running

     make linux-dri
  

  There are also linux-dri-x86, linux-dri-x86-64, and linux-ppc configurations which are optimized for those architectures.

Later, if you want to rebuild for a different configuration run make realclean before rebuilding.

1.2 The libraries

When compilation has finished, look in the top-level lib/ (or lib64/) directory. You'll see a set of library files similar to this:

lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          10 Mar 26 07:53 libGL.so -> libGL.so.1*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          19 Mar 26 07:53 libGL.so.1 -> libGL.so.1.5.060100*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users     3375861 Mar 26 07:53 libGL.so.1.5.060100*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          11 Mar 26 07:53 libGLU.so -> libGLU.so.1*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          20 Mar 26 07:53 libGLU.so.1 -> libGLU.so.1.3.060100*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users      549269 Mar 26 07:53 libGLU.so.1.3.060100*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          12 Mar 26 07:53 libglut.so -> libglut.so.3*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          16 Mar 26 07:53 libglut.so.3 -> libglut.so.3.7.1*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users      597754 Mar 26 07:53 libglut.so.3.7.1*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          11 Mar 26 08:04 libGLw.so -> libGLw.so.1*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          15 Mar 26 08:04 libGLw.so.1 -> libGLw.so.1.0.0*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users       20750 Mar 26 08:04 libGLw.so.1.0.0*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          14 Mar 26 07:53 libOSMesa.so -> libOSMesa.so.6*
lrwxrwxrwx    1 brian    users          23 Mar 26 07:53 libOSMesa.so.6 -> libOSMesa.so.6.1.060100*
-rwxr-xr-x    1 brian    users       23871 Mar 26 07:53 libOSMesa.so.6.1.060100*

libGL is the main OpenGL library (i.e. Mesa).
libGLU is the OpenGL Utility library.
libglut is the GLUT library.
libGLw is the Xt/Motif OpenGL drawing area widget library.
libOSMesa is the OSMesa (Off-Screen) interface library.

If you built the DRI hardware drivers, you'll also see the DRI drivers:

-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 15607851 Jul 21 12:11 ffb_dri.so*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 15148747 Jul 21 12:11 i810_dri.so*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 14497814 Jul 21 12:11 i830_dri.so*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 16895413 Jul 21 12:11 i915_dri.so*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11320803 Jul 21 12:11 mach64_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11418014 Jul 21 12:12 mga_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11064426 Jul 21 12:12 r128_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11849858 Jul 21 12:12 r200_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 16050488 Jul 21 12:11 r300_dri.so*
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11757388 Jul 21 12:12 radeon_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11232304 Jul 21 12:13 s3v_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11062970 Jul 21 12:13 savage_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11214212 Jul 21 12:13 sis_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 11368736 Jul 21 12:13 tdfx_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 10598868 Jul 21 12:13 trident_dri.so
-rwxr-xr-x   1 brian users 10997120 Jul 21 12:13 unichrome_dri.so

1.3 Running the demos

If you downloaded/unpacked the MesaDemos-x.y.z.tar.gz archive or obtained Mesa from CVS, the progs/ directory will contain a bunch of demonstration programs.

Before running a demo, you may have to set an environment variable (such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH on Linux) to indicate where the libraries are located. For example:

cd into the Mesa lib/ directory.
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH ${cwd} (if using csh or tcsh shell)
or,
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${PWD} (if using bash or sh shell)

Next, change to the Mesa/demos/ directory:

cd ../progs/demos

Run a demo such as gears:

./gears

If this doesn't work, try the Mesa/progs/xdemos/glxinfo program and see that it prints the expected Mesa version number.

If you're using Linux or a similar OS, verify that the demo program is being linked with the proper library files:

ldd gears

You should see something like this:

        libglut.so.3 => /home/brian/Mesa/lib/libglut.so.3 (0x40013000)
        libGLU.so.1 => /home/brian/Mesa/lib/libGLU.so.1 (0x40051000)
        libGL.so.1 => /home/brian/Mesa/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x400e0000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/libc.so.6 (0x42000000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/i686/libm.so.6 (0x403da000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x403fc000)
        libXmu.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXmu.so.6 (0x404da000)
        libXt.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXt.so.6 (0x404f1000)
        libXi.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXi.so.6 (0x40543000)
        libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0x4054b000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x405fd000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x40605000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0 (0x40613000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x40644000)
        libSM.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libSM.so.6 (0x40647000)
        libICE.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libICE.so.6 (0x40650000)

Retrace your steps if this doesn't look right.

1.4 Installing the header and library files

The standard location for the OpenGL header files on Unix-type systems is in /usr/include/GL/. The standard location for the libraries is /usr/lib/. For more information see, the Linux/OpenGL ABI specification.

If you'd like Mesa to co-exist with another implementation of OpenGL that's already installed, you'll have to choose different directories, like /usr/local/include/GL/ and /usr/local/lib/.

To install Mesa's headers and libraries, run make install. But first, check the Mesa/configs/default file and examine the values of the INSTALL_DIR and DRI_DRIVER_INSTALL_DIR variables. Change them if needed, then run make install.

The variable DESTDIR may also be used to install the contents to a temporary staging directory. This can be useful for package management. For example: make install DESTDIR=/somepath/

Note: at runtime you can use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable (on Linux at least) to switch between the Mesa libraries and other vendor's libraries whenever you want. This is a handy way to compare multiple OpenGL implementations.

1.5 pkg-config support

Running make install will install package configuration files for the pkg-config utility.

When compiling your OpenGL application you can use pkg-config to determine the proper compiler and linker flags.

For example, compiling and linking a GLUT application can be done with:

   gcc `pkg-config --cflags --libs glut` mydemo.c -o mydemo

Please see the README.WIN32 file.

Please see the README.VMS file.

• README.GGI - GGI
• README.3DFX - 3Dfx/Glide driver
• README.AMIWIN - Amiga Amiwin
• README.BEOS - BeOS
• README.D3D - Direct3D driver
• README.DJ - DJGPP
• README.LYNXOS - LynxOS
• README.MINGW32 - Mingw32
• README.NeXT - NeXT
• README.OpenStep - OpenStep
• README.OS2 - OS/2
• README.WINDML - WindML