Cross-Compiling Mesa 3D Graphics Library for ARM

Mesa is an open-source implementation of the OpenGL specification that can be used for software emulation or complete hardware acceleration for modern GPUs.The Mesa library is used by a variety of games (e.g. Quake 2.3), libraries (e.g PyOpenGL), science and technical applications and utilities (e.g. xscreensaver).

MesaLib requires X11 libraries. I’ll assume those are already cross-compiled here. For this build, I used pre-built X11 libraries found in ALIP (ARM Internet Platform) binaries. I used the method described here and copied the libs in /lib and /usr/lib and header files in /lib/include found in the qemu overo image respectively to /home/jaufranc/edeve/beagleboard/libs/lib and /home/jaufranc/edeve/beagleboard/libs/include. make sure you use the “-d” with cp to avoid copying the symlinks or some symbolic links would point to x86 binaries or files that do not exist.

Here are the instructions to cross-compile MesaLib 7.11 for ARM using arm-linux-guneabi-gcc:

Download the latest version of Mesa source code:

wget ftp://ftp.freedesktop.org/pub/mesa/7.11/MesaLib-7.11.tar.bz2

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wget ftp://ftp.freedesktop.org/pub/mesa/7.11/MesaLib-7.11.tar.bz2
Extract the source code

tar xjvf MesaLib-7.11.tar.bz2 cd Mesa-7.11

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tar xjvf MesaLib-7.11.tar.bz2
cd Mesa-7.11
Install the following packages (makedepend is part of xutils-dev):

sudo apt-get install xutils-dev flex bison xorg-dev llvm

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sudo apt-get install xutils-dev flex bison xorg-dev llvm
Download, build and install libdrm 2.4.26:

wget http://dri.freedesktop.org/libdrm/libdrm-2.4.26.tar.bz2 tar xvjf libdrm-2.4.26.tar.bz2 cd libdrm-2.4.26 ./configure make sudo make install

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wget http://dri.freedesktop.org/libdrm/libdrm-2.4.26.tar.bz2
tar xvjf libdrm-2.4.26.tar.bz2
cd libdrm-2.4.26
./configure
make
sudo make install
There seems to be a problem with libdrm make install, so we also need to copy some extra header files manually:

sudo cp nouveau/*.h /usr/include/drm/

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sudo cp nouveau/*.h /usr/include/drm/
Configure and build Mesa for x86.

cd ../Mesa-7.11 ./configure make

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cd ../Mesa-7.11
./configure
make

You do not actually need to build the full MesaLib at this point, you could interrupt the build after builtin_compiler is built.
Save a copy of builtin_compiler and glsl_compiler:

cd src/glsl cp builtin_compiler builtin_compiler_x86

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cd src/glsl
cp builtin_compiler builtin_compiler_x86
Clean the source directory:

cd ../.. make distclean

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cd ../..
make distclean

Start build Mesa for ARM:

CFLAGS="-I/usr/include" \
X11_LIBS="-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi \
-lX11" X11_INCLUDES="-I/usr/include" X11_CFLAGS="-I/usr/include" ./configure \
--target=arm-linux-gnueabi --host=arm-linux-gnueabi --prefix=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs \
--includedir=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/include/ \
--libdir=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi \
--libdir=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib
make

CFLAGS="-I/usr/include" \

X11_LIBS="-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi \

-lX11" X11_INCLUDES="-I/usr/include" X11_CFLAGS="-I/usr/include" ./configure \

--target=arm-linux-gnueabi --host=arm-linux-gnueabi --prefix=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs \

--includedir=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/include/ \

--libdir=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi \

--libdir=/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib

make

This should end with an error while building builtin_compiler.

Then copy builtin_compiler_x86 back to builtin_compiler

cd src/glsl cp builtin_compiler_x86 builtin_compiler

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cd src/glsl
cp builtin_compiler_x86 builtin_compiler

Edit the config file configs/current to add the library paths for GL as follows:

GL_LIB_DEPS = $(EXTRA_LIB_PATH) <strong>-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi \ -L/usr/arm-linux-gnueabi/lib/</strong> -lX11 -lXext    -lm -lpthread -ldl

1	GL_LIB_DEPS = $(EXTRA_LIB_PATH) <strong>-L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib/arm-linux-gnueabi \ -L/usr/arm-linux-gnueabi/lib/</strong> -lX11 -lXext -lm -lpthread -ldl

And keep building:

make make install

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make
make install

This was tested in Ubuntu 11.04 (natty) and 10.04 LTS with linaro gcc toolchain.

N.B: If your platform does not use X11 and just want to do off-screen rendering, you can build Mesa on linux with:

make linux-osmesa

1	make linux-osmesa

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.