#1049407 gnome-shell: build-time tests crash when using Mesa softpipe

#1049407#5
Date:
2023-08-15 10:31:38 UTC
From:
To:
Steps to reproduce:

1. Get a source tree and build-dependencies

2. Remove this workaround from d/rules if you are using mips(64)el:

ifneq ($(filter mips%,$(DEB_HOST_ARCH_CPU)),)
# gnome-shell on mips(64)el works on a real GPU (in practice usually an
# AMD GPU), but crashes when using llvmpipe or softpipe, which is all that
# is available on the buildds, so we only run the unit tests at build time
# and skip the tests that would run the whole Shell. See discussion in
# https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/71
meson_test_options += --no-suite shell
endif

3. Add this instead:

export GALLIUM_DRIVER=softpipe
export LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=true

4. debuild

Expected result: tests pass.

Actual result: tests fail with a gnome-shell
crash. According to mips porter YunQiang Su on
<https://salsa.debian.org/gnome-team/gnome-shell/-/merge_requests/71>,
this is also reproducible on arm64 (I have not verified this).

Impact: nobody intentionally uses softpipe in practice, but this
prevents us from using it as a workaround when llvmpipe has issues
(such as #1049404).

YunQiang Su writes:
...
...

This suggests that there is some timing or multi-threading issue that is
triggering this when using softpipe.

shell_wm_completed_map() is a gnome-shell function, nothing to do with
Mesa or LLVM, and similarly gjs/gi/function.cpp is part of gjs, so I
think this is more likely to be a bug in gobject-introspection, gjs,
gnome-shell or mutter than a bug in LLVM or Mesa.

My guess would be that there's some fallback rendering path that is
rarely tested and therefore contains bugs, because all real-world GNOME
Shell users are using either a hardware GPU or llvmpipe, and nobody uses
softpipe in practice.

    smcv

#1049407#10
Date:
2026-01-10 10:10:20 UTC
From:
To:
Es gibt eine Familienspende in Höhe von 1.850.000,00 USD von Cheng Charlie
Saephan. Bitte antworten Sie für weitere Informationen. Denken Sie daran,
Ihrer Familie und den Bedürftigen in Ihrer Umgebung Gutes zu tun.

Dies ist bereits der zweite Versuch, Sie zu erreichen. Bitte antworten Sie
für weitere Details.