Created a 2.0 download (zip file), contents:
This is just a temp link so ppl can take a look, I will post it at http://code.google.com/p/jmonkeyengine/downloads/ today if there are no issues with it.
(I need to get my webserver back online so I don't have to use stupid free file hosts anymore…)
What was your reason for packaging jME in a single jar?
I was thinking we would supply all of the jars (created when one runs Dist-All) in addition to this download. However, there has been several complaints in the past about the seperation of the jar files.
For people just wanting to get up and running with jME a single file seems like a nice solution, no dealing with the SVN or creating new libraries; just download it and it has everything you need to get up and running. In order to create a new jME project with that all one needs to do is point their IDE to the single jME jar file (which is why I included the source directly into it) and set their native path…
(also, its almost 1/10 the size of downloading from the SVN…)
That sounds good. I think we can do both, because more experienced users who choose a versioned jar, may want to exclude certain packages.
My thoughts exactly, I guess I did forget to mention this download was in addition to the 'dist' jars that ppl should use when it time for distribution in their project.
Think of this more as a solution to 'get people up and coding' with the least amount of effort/time needed.
To create a new project; one simple needs to included this library in their IDE, code, clean and build, then copy the (included) lib folder under the created project dist/lib folders. So the actual command to run any project (outside of the IDE) would be:
java -jar -Xmx256m -Djava.library.path="lib/lib/natives" jarFile.jar
i think the one big jar is a good idea as long as there are separate downloads for just the distribution jars.
Maybe add a line in the readme.txt to the wiki page which explains how to use the jar in a IDE.
(its easier to update a wiki page than the readme.txt in the jar 
)
I think to ease whoever is updating the downloads (and for simplicity) there should be 2 downloads.
One the "Complete" zip archive, and a second "Distribution" zip archive that contains all the jar files created w/ dist-all.
otherwise we end up with 14 downloads (and a ton of questions I am sure) that have to be maintained…
Furthermore, zipping the jar files ensures that any download corruption is caught when the file is unzipped.
I am updating the downloads now, let me know what you think
IMO a complete distribution should contain the jar files, require libraries, native files and javadocs. Source can be supplied as a separate download.
The source is in the jar file, so to the end user it is just magically there (if they program in an IDE); or if they wanted to they could decompress the jar file and take the source out. In an IDE it should function a lot like the JavaDoc except they can view a read-only copy of the source it would have been generated from (which I really, really like libraries that do).
How would you feel about reversing that and having the JavaDoc as a separate download?
I vote for keeping it a simple as possible: leave the javadoc in.
I think there is a minor problem with the way I have packaged up the download. Any SWT tests (unless the user is on OSX) will fail, this due to only the one swt.jar copied into the lib folder.
I do really think having a complete download (that's ready to test, program with) is very nice to have (some ppl can't use SVN…), and apparently I am not the only one since there is over 1000 downloads and it hasn't even be up for a week.
As I see it we have 6 options (with the current setup):
? Should this be a possible 2.01 release - all packaged nicely
I kind of like the last option:
Remove the swt.jar file completely and have a single swt.zip file that has every swt.jar in it. This way if someone want to work with swt it is their responsibility to set it up correctly.
+1 for the last option.
It makes life more difficult for me as I use the SWT stuff, but I think that most people probably don't so this seems to be a good idea to me.
Would'nt it be better to deploy a core jME package and some platform specific addons?
Just letting everybody know that I started working on jME3… Two things:
WOW!
What can we/I do to help??
Momoko_Fan said:
Just letting everybody know that I started working on jME3.. Two things:
1) You will probably need a DirectX10 compatible card (GeForce 8000, Radeon HD)
2) It will be made mostly from scratch with some general parts like math & frustum culling taken from jME2.
That's all I have to say for now.