Hi everyone,
I'm trying to figure out the correct way of keeping the Mesa driver updated to the latest stable release on a Slackware64 system without tracking the -current branch.
I already asked the same question some time ago on the IRC channel, and the kind user Orbea provided me with some slackbuilds he used to keep his system updated to the latest version from git. Unfortunately I lost his links and I can't seem to find them anywhere on the net, and since I couldn't find any step-by-step or tutorial for doing this I figured I could make a post here that could serve as a guide for other newbie users like me in the future (I also hope to gain a better understanding of how the driver is built and works in the process, coming from Ubuntu where I just had to add a repository and press the update button).
As I understand, the driver needs several components to be built with it, namely:
- llvm toolchain (slackware-current use version 3.9, Ubuntu uses version 4, I understand that it is a sensible system component and should be treated carefully)
- libdrm
- hw acceleration drivers (vdpau,vaapi,...)
- Mesa package
I think I should build and install all these separately, and maybe there's a special building order that I should keep in mind?
Am I forgetting something important here?
Other questions that comes to mind are:
- multilib compatibility (if my system has multilib enabled should I convert all the packages built with the convertpkg tool?)
- wayland compatibility (should require some additional flags in the slackbuilds, maybe even additional packages to build?)
- Vulkan support (for now only available on Intel and radeonsi drivers, again should require additional packages or just some flags or both?)
That's all I can think for now, feel free to add anything missing and correct anything wrong. If all goes well I could write up a detailed tutorial for the wiki, since it's missing info on the topic.
Thanks everyone for the attention.
