Mesa 3D OpenGL 3.2 with software rasterizer

Question

I'm trying to create an OpenGL context 3.2 on a Netbook running Ubuntu 13. Since the hardware isn't capable of hardware-supported Opengl 3.2, I'm wondering if the software rasterizer could provide such functionality. I'm aware that software mode can be utterly slow, but I just need to test and practice some simple examples.

I couldn't find any definitive information on the Internet that would say it's possible or not, and my knowledge on Mesa is very limited. So my question is, is it possible to create a software-based OpenGL 3.2 context with Mesa or not?

Answer 1

Currently, it isn't. When using one of the software rasterizer backends (the old, deprecated swrast, or the more modern, gallium-based softpipe or llvmpipe drivers), only GL 2.1 will be advertised. The issue is that mesa's software rasterizers do not yet support multisampling, which is a requirement of GL 3.x. There might be also some other minor features missing which are required for GL 3.x.

However, you can still use most of the GL 3.2 features via the extension mechanism, without having a 3.2 context. This also means that you won't be able to get a core profile context, but this shouldn't be a problem either - nothing forces you to actually use the deprecated functionality.