Windows users are increasingly using Mesa, and Microsoft has invested in supporting many different open, industry-standard APIs and then layered them on top of the underlying Direct3D 12 driver for WSL2 use. OpenGL, OpenCL, Vulkan and VA-API video acceleration have been the main targets for Microsoft engineers working on Mesa s main goal.
They took into account the Windows Subsystem for Linux, while also suggesting other possible use cases where hosts might lack native drivers for these APIs. To improve Mesa on Windows, Microsoft has now added compiled support for the DirectX 12 Agility SDK.
The DirectX 12 Agility SDK is the equivalent of a redistributable build of Direct3D 12. The Agility SDK breaks this link and applications can choose to use this redistributable SDK build without requiring users to upgrade their Windows version for new graphics features.
Thus, where Mesa uses the D3D12 Agility SDK, it can choose to use the newer D3D12 features without having to upgrade to Windows. This is particularly useful for continuous integration (CI) testing/development or for those rolling their own version of Mesa for Windows who do not wish to be forced to upgrade to Windows.
Microsoft engineers have added support for the Agility SDK to their Mesa D3D12 driver. In a subsequent merger, the Agility SDK has also added support for Vulkan’s “Dzn” (Dozen) driver on D3D12.
These additions and other improvements will be released as part of Mesa 22.3 in a stable release later this year.
