Mesa may be compiled in several different ways:
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
To build the DRI drivers you'll first need to have the DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) kernel drivers and header files. They're available from the DRI project.
You can get them from CVS by doing:
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@pds.freedesktop.org:/cvs/dri login (hit enter when prompted for a password) cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@pdx.freedesktop.org:/cvs/dri co drm
Make note of the directory in which the drm files are placed.
See the DRI Building Instructions for the steps to build the DRM modules.
Next, in the Mesa-x.y.z/configs/default file, set the
DRM_SOURCE_PATH variable to indicate where the DRM files
are located.
Now build Mesa and the DRI drivers by running
make linux-dri
There are also linux-dri-x86, linux-dri-x86-64,
and linux-ppc configurations, optimized for those architectures.
Finally, you'll need a DRI-enabled X server from X.org or XFree86. Visit those projects' home pages for more information.
Later, if you want to rebuild for a different configuration run
make realclean before rebuilding.
When compilation has finished, look in the top-level lib/
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 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 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
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.
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
You'll be prompted to enter alternative directories for the headers
and libraries.
Note: at runtime, you can set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH (on Linux) to switch between the Mesa libs and another vendor libs whenever you want. This is a handy way to compare multiple OpenGL implementations.
Please see the README.WIN32 file.
Please see the README.VMS file.
Documentation for other environments (some may be very out of date):