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Add report from the graphics team

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Approved by:	hrs (mentor, blanket)
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Benjamin Kaduk 2015-01-08 19:59:11 +00:00
parent c7fcb57b14
commit d868bfa647
Notes: svn2git 2020-12-08 03:00:23 +00:00 
svn path=/head/; revision=46173
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en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/news/status/report-2014-10-2014-12.xml
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</help>
</project>
<project cat='ports'>
<title>The Graphics stack on FreeBSD</title>
<contact>
<person>
<name>FreeBSD Graphics team</name>
<email>freebsd-x11@FreeBSD.org</email>
</person>
</contact>
<links>
<url href="https://wiki.freebsd.org/Graphics">Graphics stack roadmap and supported hardware matrix</url>
<url href="http://blogs.freebsdish.org/graphics/">Graphics stack team blog</url>
<url href="https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ports-graphics">Ports development tree on GitHub</url>
</links>
<body>
<p>Mesa was upgraded to 10.3, then 10.4 for FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE and
11-CURRENT. We test release candidates and therefore this port is
now usually updated shortly after a new release. Mesa 10.x brings
huge improvements in terms of OpenGL standards support, performance
and stability, especially for Radeon owners. Mesa 9.1 is kept for
FreeBSD 9.x, but we have plans to fix this; see below.</p>
<p><tt>graphics/gbm</tt> and <tt>devel/libclc</tt> are new ports used
by Mesa to implement OpenCL. The next step is to finish the port for
Mesa's libOpenCL.so, named Clover. This will permit users to run
OpenCL programs on Radeon GPUs for now.</p>
<p>xserver was upgraded from 1.12 to 1.14. This is the last version
of xserver supporting Mesa 9.1. Changes are described in an article
on the blog. The most noticeable one is probably the switch from
the input device detection back-end based on HAL to the one based on
devd. hald(8) is still required by many desktop environments, but
the X.Org server itself is free from it.</p>
<p>xserver was the last port supporting the <tt>WITH_NEW_XORG</tt>
knob. The knob is now completely removed. This was the occasion to
add <tt>WITH_NEW_XORG</tt> and <tt>WITH_KMS</tt> to the list of
deprecated knobs to help people clean up their <tt>make.conf</tt>.
At the same time, the new-xorg alternate pkg repository was
deprecated.</p>
<p>After discussion, two patent-encumbered options were enabled by
default:</p>
<ul>
<li><tt>TEXTURE_FLOAT</tt> in graphics/dri, which allows Mesa to
advertise the support for OpenGL 3.0+;</li>
<li><tt>LCD_FILTERING</tt> in print/freetype2, which enables the
subpixel rendering engine, improving font anti-aliasing.</li>
</ul>
<p>These two packages now provide a better user experience
out-of-the-box. Users who are uncomfortable with the options may
unset them and rebuild the ports. There is no need to rebuild
anything else.</p>
<p>On the kernel side, Tijl Coosemans added AGP support back to the
TTM memory manager and therefore to the Radeon driver. His work was
merged back to stable/10 and will be available in FreeBSD
10.2-RELEASE.</p>
<p>We migrated our Ports development tree to Git and GitHub. Tracking
changes in the official Ports tree and preparing patches is way
easier. Furthermore, we can accept pull requests. All reasons behind
this change are detailed on the blog and the workf-low is described
on the wiki.</p>
<p>The XDC 2014 (X Developer's Conference) was a great conference.
Reviving the relationship with the developers of the graphics
stack was a success! A report is available on the blog.</p>
<p>Our next items on the roadmap are:</p>
<ol>
<li>Provide FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE's i915 driver to FreeBSD 9.x users
through a new port. This is a work in progress, but it would allow
us to remove Mesa 9.1 and make Mesa 10.4 available everywhere.</li>
<li>Once Mesa 9.1 is gone, we can update xserver to 1.16.</li>
</ol>
</body>
<help>
<task>
<p>See the "Graphics" wiki page for up-to-date information.</p>
</task>
</help>
</project>
</report>