[ODE] documentation initiative

[Luke Palmer]

Mike Wuetherick writes:
> sure there is cross-platform development going on, but if you remove the 
> one major platform that EVERYONE has to build on - if you are creating 
> commercial games you are building for visual studio on windows pretty 
> much - you remove a major source of difficulties for people getting 
> started with the engine.

Have you ever done any cross-platform development?  Yeah, everyone is
using windows, but a whole different everyone is using linux, OSX, etc.
And you have no idea how difficult it is (many times impossible) to make
something cross-platform without a pre-build step.

It didn't take us much to build on windows, all you have to do is read
the Wiki, download GNU make (they point you right to it, and there's no
"install", just a copy), run a batch file, and type "make".  Simple
stuff for any programmer.  It'd certainly be nice if the main page would
point more directly to that document, however.

And it was very nice for our cross-platform game that ODE was friendly
for the other operating systems.  It uses a Makefile, so we can include
it right in our tree and hack the internals to our heart's content, and
it builds nicely right along with the rest of our project.

But I was disappointed that there was no pre-build library and header
set for the releases.  This should be something to look into, but don't
expect it to be maintained in CVS.  That's a pain in the ass for people
not working on windows, which a lot of developers (contrary to your
claims) do.  Just the releases should be fine.

Luke

> 
> i haven't even gotten to the point of looking at the ODE internals and 
> how to 'use' it because i haven't gotten past the building step.
> 
> i know i'm not the guru that most of you guys seem to be, 
> programming-wise, but i'm also not unfamiliar with setting up and 
> integrating other libraries.  ode is the ONLY one i've run into this 
> situation with.
> 
> just my 2 1/2 bits.
> 
> cheers
> mike w
> www.realityfactory.ca
> 
> Jon Watte wrote:
> > If I may be perfectly honest, I think that most of the
> > recurring questions on this list (not all, but most) have
> > to do with linkage or compilation issues. Almost all of
> > those have to do with the tool set used by the asker, not
> > with ODE per se. It's un-clear to me how ODE tutorials
> > can solve THAT problem -- i e, people asking us how their
> > own, un-related tools, work.
> >
> > Unless you want to create a tutorial for every compiler,
> > linker, and project manager under the sun, that is. Maybe
> > you have lots of spare time :-)
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
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