It's Looking Like The Next Mesa Release Won't Be Delayed For OpenGL 4.5

This weekend was the ambitious proposal to delay Mesa 12.0 until there's OpenGL 4.5 support in this open-source driver stack, which could tack on around an extra month to the release schedule. It's now looking like this change in release planning will not happen.

While the developers initially responding to David Airlie's proposal were in favor of delaying the release for OpenGL 4.5, it's now looking like that this won't fly. Mesa release manager Emil Velikov has responded and largely shoots down the proposal: this proposal came late in the cycle, Mesa has of late been only on time-based release cycles, etc.

AMD's Marek Olšák also came out in favor of the current release schedule to have three months of bug fixing for OpenGL 4.5 and the newer code-paths. Even if not shipping OpenGL 4.5 until Mesa's September release, it still is usually enough time for the fall Linux distribution updates for Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. Intel's Kenneth Graunke also came out in favor of doing the Mesa 11.3/12.0 release as-is considering all of the features already built up over the past three months.

So as it stands now, it's looking like Mesa 11.3/12.0 will be released in June as planned while the September Mesa update is what should be real interesting with at least OpenGL 4.5 support for some hardware.