[Gta04-owner] Replicant: EGL configurations without GPU ?

[Paul Kocialkowski]

> As I like freedom, I prefer to use Firefox to browse the web and I've
> noticed that on GTA04 it can be installed, but isn't usable (the UI
> seems freezed and display only the navigation bar with the option menu
> aside).

Indeed, Firefox is broken on Replicant, for all devices (not only the
GTA04).

> So I've run adb logcat to see if I'm able to help you supporting Firefox
> and I've noticed this line :
> 
>         E/GeckoAppShell(  963): org.mozilla.gecko.gfx.GLController
>         $GLControllerException: No available EGL configurations Error
>         12288
>         
> Well, as I remember, we don't use the GPU on Replicant and if I
> understand correctly this error, EGL is related to OpenGL which suppose
> to have a (3D?) GPU.

This is correct. The EGL implementation we are using the the one Google
wrote for the SDK emulator and that still is a fallback implementation
that nobody expect us really use. As you can see, it is incomplete and
lacks some features that are apparently required to run Firefox.

> Has anyone seen a Replicant configuration to emulate the OpenGL features
> with CPU ? (IIRC, there's a mean with llvmpipe on standard desktop, but
> I don't know if it's usable with Replicant).

I have tried llvmpipe with Mesa on Replicant a few months back and it
was slow as hell. That was on higher-end devices (Nexus S and Galaxy S
2). It was less than 1fps on the Nexus S and perhaps about 2 or 3 fps on
the Galaxy S 2. It was even worse using swrast, as you an imagine.
llvmpipe is just too demanding CPU-wise and perhaps it's not optimized
best for ARM platforms. On the other hand, the Android EGL
implementation seems to have ARM optimizations (perhaps NEON ASM code)
Though the implementation was feature-complete with llvmpipe ;)

> I think it could be usefull to have such emulation for other
> applications too (like games). Anyway, thanks for your great job!

There is a ticket open about this issue at the Replicant tracker:
http://redmine.replicant.us/issues/705 and it is listed as one of the
tasks to improve Replicant:
http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Tasks

Sadly, I'm busy-enough with low-level hardware support and don't have
enough valuable knowledge in hands to bring any real change to the
situation. Hopefully, we'll find someone who has the time and talent to
improve the situation!

-- 
Paul Kocialkowski, Replicant developer

Replicant is a fully free Android distribution

Website: http://www.replicant.us/
Redmine: http://redmine.replicant.us/
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