[ODE] ODE for Java v0.2 released

[Tim Schmidt]

Hi!

Just a few minutes ago I released ODE for Java v0.2


Features:
---------

ODE for Java is now splitted up in
- a core package that represents the pure JNI binding to ODE.
- an extension package that contains additional features that
   need source changes or additions in the original ODE
   distribution.
- a java3d package that provides a scenegraph representation
   of several ODE objects and comes with behaviors for setting up
   the simulation loop.

The JNI of ODEforJava v0.2 is designed to run with ODE v0.039 and should
cover most of the ODE functionality that is available in that
distribution (no OPCODE).

The source packages are delivered as Eclipse projects with (to be
slightly adjusted) ant scripts that generate JNI header files and create
the final library on linux systems.

An MSVC project is included to build the library on Windows systems.


Remarks:
--------

I know there is another JNI wrapper for ODE on dev.java.net called
odejava. As far as I found out it uses SWIG to generate the JNI binding
automatically which is a promising approach regarding the production of
less error-prone software and being always close to the development of ODE.
Nevertheless I wonder if this automated wrapper generation also accounts
for all ODE-specific inner object dependencies in conjunction with java
garbage collection.
If anybody makes or has made experiences in comparing these two projects
especially with regard to this issue I would be glad to hear about and
learn from that. I want to emphasise that I do *not* mention this to
make another project bad. Far from it! Please test both. ;-)


History:
--------

After the first version v0.1 had been released by me in Nov. 2002 Max
Gilead established the sourceforge project and put the sources of v0.1
into it.

In Jan. 2003 he released the core part as v0.11 with helpful changes
regarding java3d dependencies and gcc issues. A complete rewrite was
under consideration but has not been done.

In Mar. 2003 I included some of Max's changes into my own trunk and
started development to adapt ODEforJava to ODE's new collision detection
architecture. The development continued but without any updates to the
sourceforge site.

In conjunction with another project that deals with simulated physics
and augmented reality (check out
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jartoolkit) I restructured and revised
the sources and made my ant script (hopefully) useful for other people,
too. Today I released it as v0.2.


kind regards

	Tim Schmidt