[ODE] documentation initiative

[gl]

Guys, "there should be a VC workspace in CVS"??  Well there is - mine!  Did
you miss my recent posts about it??

I understand the frustration getting ODE to work the first time - I did
manage to get it to work on win using the configurator at the time, but it
was messy and long winded (and things like 'you have to manually create the
lib dir or it will fail mysteriously' don't help matters).

That's why I pushed to have my workspace right in the ODE root, in \VC6.
I'm not familiar with other platforms, but adding similar setups where
appropriate for other compilers is the right thing to do IMO.

I also think that pre-compiled binaries aren't really that helpful.  Why?
Because official ODE releases tend to be seriously out of date, and so most
people sooner or later want a CVS build - if they can't build it themselves,
well, they're screwed.  The answer is simple, maintained compiler setups,
not binaries (although they can be usefull to get started).

With my workspace, all you do is:

1) setup the include/lib paths
2) run a batch file (to select float/double, trimish on/off support).

(as documented in the ReadMe file).  That's it.

BTW, Russ, please include it in the next official release - it's stable and
will avoid a lot of the complaints.

Oh, and Billy:

> The problem ended up being the paths being screwed up and it grabbing
includes or libs or something from one of the 98 previous other versions of
ode i have on my machine <snip> It would of taken forever for a newer user.

A new user wouldn't have had '98 previous other versions of ODE' installed
now, would he ; ).  I'm afraid setting up paths comes with the territory.
--
gl

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Billy Zelsnack" <billy_zelsnack at yahoo.com>
To: <ode at q12.org>
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2004 6:16 AM
Subject: [ODE] documentation initiative


> This is the kind of attitude that made open-source completely worthless
> on
> the windows platform up until a couple of years ago.
>
> There is no reason why you can't have many happy build systems. Miles
> is
> right. Each platform should have a separate maintainer. Someone that
> actually gives a shit about their platform.
>
> Under vc6/vc7 you should be able to just double click on the project
> and
> have it magically build.
>
> Under linux you can use whatever the latest fashion in building is.
>
> Under elite-linux it could be so complicated and obscure to build that
> it
> takes 3 days just to figure out how to build the tools required to
> build
> ode.
>
> The point is, just throw each platform build in its own directory and
> make a
> rule that they can't interfere with any other builds.
>
> About a month ago I spent several hours getting the vc6 build to work.
> The
> problem ended up being the paths being screwed up and it grabbing
> includes
> or libs or something from one of the 98 previous other versions of ode
> i
> have on my machine. I have been using vc6 for at least 5 years or
> whatever
> now and it still took me awhile to figure it out. It would of taken
> forever
> for a newer user.
>
> ---------------
> Luke Palmer wrote:
> >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.
>
>
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