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. DRM kernel modules and header files from the DRI project.

     If you don't already have the DRM file, you can get the sources from CVS by doing:

     cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.freedesktop.org:/cvs/dri co drm
     

     See the DRI Building Instructions for the steps to build the DRM modules. Mesa 6.5 requires at least libdrm 2.0.1 or greater.

     You can verify that the DRM files have been properly installed by running pkg-config --modversion libdrm

  2. Recent /usr/include/GL/glxproto.h file.

     You'll need this if you get any errors about _GLXvop_BindTexImageEXT being undefined.

     Download/install the glproto module from X.org git, or grab the glxproto.h file and put it in the Mesa/include/GL/ directory.

  3. DRI-enabled X server.

     Visit XFree86 or X.org for more information.

  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

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.

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