Mesa Developers Consider Branching Off Some Older GPU Drivers - Including AMD R300/R600
Mesa developers are discussing the possibility of moving older GPU drivers, including AMD R300 and R600, to a new legacy Git branch called 'Amber2' to streamline development of modern OpenGL and Vulkan drivers. This follows a 2021 effort to isolate outdated 'classic' drivers into the 'Amber' branch, which has since seen little activity. The move aims to reduce codebase complexity and CI issues, though some debate remains over the maintenance needs of drivers like R600.
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Mesa Developers Consider Branching Off Some Older GPU Drivers - Including AMD R300/R600 Written by Michael Larabel in Mesa on 1 May 2026 at 06:17 AM EDT. Add A Comment Mike Blumenkrantz of Valve's Linux graphics team has ignited a discussion over potentially shifting some of Mesa's older GPU drivers into a new legacy Git branch in order to better support the more modern OpenGL and Vulkan drivers without having to worry about breaking the legacy drivers and to allow for better cleaning of the Mesa codebase. Among the drivers that could be impacted are the ATI/AMD R300 and R600 drivers and many smaller drivers. Back in 2021 various old Mesa "classic" non-Gallium3D drivers were punted off into a Mesa "Amber" branch to ease Mesa development burdens.
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