Compilation and Installation

1. Unix/X11 Compilation and Installation

Mesa uses a rather conventional Makefile system. A GNU autoconf/automake system used to be included, but was discarded in Mesa 5.1 because:

• It seldom worked on IRIX, Solaris, AIX, etc.
• It was very compilicated
• Nobody maintained it
• libtool was just too weird

If someone strongly feels that Mesa should have a autoconf/automake system and wants to contribute one and maintain it, we'll consider adding it again.

In Mesa 6.1 we modified the conventional Makefile system. Instead of specifying all the various system configurations in the Make-config file, there's a directory named configs/ which has an individual file for each configuration. One of the configs gets copied to configs/current, which is then included by all Makefiles.

1.1 Compilation

Note: if you've obtained Mesa through CVS, do this first:

    cd Mesa
    chmod a+x bin/mklib

Just 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

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/ 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.

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

2. Windows Compilation and Installation

3. VMS Compilation and Installation

4. Other systems

Documentation for other environments (some may be very out of date):