EGL_MESA_platform_surfaceless Firmed Up In Mesa For ChromeOS

Written by Michael Larabel in Mesa on 15 October 2016 at 08:15 AM EDT. 1 Comment
MESA
Chad Versace, the Intel OTC developer turned Googler who is part of the Chrome OS driver team, has been baking the EGL_MESA_platform_surfaceless extension and its implementation inside Mesa.

EGL_MESA_platform_surfaceless is used by Chrome OS with its Freon stack and the EGL null platform. The EGL extension is described by the tentative specification as "This extension defines a new EGL platform, the "surfaceless" platform. This platfom's defining property is that it has no native surfaces, and hence neither eglCreatePlatformWindowSurface nor eglCreatePlatformPixmapSurface can be used. The platform is independent of any native window system. The platform's intended use case is for enabling OpenGL and OpenGL ES applications on systems where no window system exists. However, the platform's permitted usage is not restricted to this case. Since the platform is independent of any native window system, it may also be used on systems where a window system is present."

The implementation is in Mesa Git in time for the next release. The specification is currently working its way into the public Khronos EGL repository. This extension should be applicable to some interesting use-cases too outside of Chrome OS.
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