[ODE] documentation initiative

[Mike Wuetherick]

 > 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.

We are just getting into the sleeping dragon that cross-platform 
development is - i am well aware of the difficulty in maintaining builds 
- and am not particularly looking forward to having to deal with them on 
our own engine.  We've ported one of our 4 project/workspaces so that it 
compiles under devC++ (on windows so far one-baby-step-at-a-time), but 
haven't had time to complete the remainder.

 > 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.

Would also be nice if you could point us to said document if it's 
mentioned ;}

I might also mention that instead of just chiding me for my 'ignorance', 
point me in the proper direction.  Please - being painfully aware of my 
lack of experience in this regard, this is something I have searched 
for, and not yet found in the 20+ years i've been programming (including 
the 8+ years i've been using VC++).

> 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.

Is there a 'faq' anywhere online (or in a reference/book?) that points 
out the blatantly obvious things that you WILL run into in this regard?

I have a number of excellent books on cross-platform programming, but 
none that even mention build/compiler issues that one might run into, 
they all seem to assume that you will just 'figure it out' it seems.

Cheers,
Mike Wuetherick
www.realityfactory.ca