14 DAY TRIAL // With a three-day delay than initially expected, the second Release Candidate (RC) build of the upcoming Mesa 17.1 3D Graphics Library was announced by Collabora's Emil Velikov.
Mesa 17.1.0 just started two weeks ago, but it already looks like it will be a major release of the open-source graphics stack used by default in numerous Linux-based operating systems for providing top-notch GPU support to users, especially for AMD Radeon and Intel graphics cards, but also for Nvidia GPUs.
Mesa 17.1.0 Release Candidate 2 is here a week after the first RC, and it looks like it brings about 18 changes, addressing various issues or implementing new functionality. Most of the work appears to be under the hood, but we can't help but notice two improvements to the Intel ANV Vulkan driver.
These are the ability to flush memory after copy, disablement of CCS on BDW input attachments. Mesa 17.1 RC2 also addresses checking of remaining xfb prims for GLES with multiple instances, moves glMultiDrawArrays to vbo and fixes error handling, and repairs gl_DrawID handling in glMultiDrawArrays.
Mesa 17.1 Release Candidate 3 expected at the end of the week
A crash with the Freedreno driver that occurred when ctx was pulled apart with no rendering was also fixed. We've attached the full changelog below if you're curious to know what exactly was changed in Mesa 17.1 Release Candidate 2, which you can download right now from our website if you want to take it for a test drive.
The development cycle continues later this week or first thing next week with the third and possibly last Release Candidate. The final release of Mesa 17.1.0 should hit the streets in early May. The exact date is not known yet, but it was currently set for May 5, 2017, if everything goes according to plan.