Why do you get errors after checkout? How does the source open? Is the “src” folder somehow being auto-recognized and used for a new project?
Exactly, eclipse tries to determine the projects structure, and assumes src is the src folder, not the subfolders of it. (And if I not use a java project, it does not know what ant means)
Um… guys? This discussion is a month old, but jme3 still sucks to set up in Eclipse for a game developer.
The issue is that as a game developer, I want the sources included, e.g. when debugging. (That joystick bug fixed these days would have had me stumped otherwise.)
Eclipse wants sources in a directory or in a .zip file.
Problem is, the distribution comes only with source .zips for four of the .jars. The rest is unavailable. The binary distribution is essentially unusable in that form.
A binary distribution that I found much more pleasurable was on SLF4J Binary files . In that, for each classfile jar foo.jar, I found:
- a directory foo (with two source directories, one for tests, one for the distribution - that's a typical Maven setup that I don't care much about but Maven people would),
- the foo.jar itself, ready for redistribution,
- a foo-sources.jar (a foo-sources.zip would have been nicer but .jars can be renamed), and
- a foo-javadoc.jar - well, that's missing actually. It's a separate download for that project. I have to say I don't care much about javadoc since Eclipse generates it ad hoc from sources as needed, so it wasn't an issue for me, but I guess Netbeans people may want it.
Well okay, jme3 is in beta and maybe I shouldn't expect a binary distribution right now :)
So I went and set up an Eclipse project directly from sources.
I removed the standard src/ folder and made all the subfolders into Java source folders (even somewhat experienced Eclipse users seem to not know about that, so this is still a blocker; in case you're reading this: the setting is on the Source tab in Build Path).
Getting all the errors out still required hours of hair-pulling:
- Identifying and activating the right binary libraries isn't easy (you don't get warnings about missing links, just runtime crashes, so it's an unpleasurable repetitive process, prone to repetition as you activate more parts of jme3).
- Having lots of platform-specific variants for bullet-related stuff, plus source directories & precompiled libraries & jbullet & jme3 wrappers for (j)bullet made it easy to mix up things accidentally. This requires a really thorough explanation of what to find in which directory, and how their contents can be made to mix and match.
- I spent another useless hour with configuring Eclipse to stop spitting out several hundred warnings. (Most are harmless but might point out micro inefficiencies; some really should be addressed. I blame beta status for this.)
Hmf. The docs say "just put the .jar in your classpath". I have seen better jokes. Well, I repeat the mantra "jme3 is beta", and I know that getting the distribution stuff is hard and and a lot of work; can't expect a project to do everything well.
Here's my proposal to move this forward:
- restore the broken Eclipse project settings, but move them to a subdirectory named, say, broken-eclipse-project-settings. Possibly containing a README.txt file explaining what's broken. That's going to get people into the "let's fix this" mood rather than "why do they pull Eclipse?" whine.
- Until the Eclipse project is fixed again, put .settings under svn:ignore. This will get rid of that annoying "I want to commit the Eclipse-generated .settings directory" marker. (I see .classpath and .project are on svn:ignore already.)
The issue is that a real developer who knows his IDE has absolutely no issues setting up the jme3 sources and that there is no way to set up the whole source for compilation in eclipse (explained in previous posts and in your “issues” in compiling it). We have way less issues with eclipse users now as they are not mislead by the project files anymore. One last time: JME3 is built using ant. Period.
Edit: Oh, and the manual says “put all jar files from the lib directory on your class path”, other eclipse users managed to, you will get there too ^^
@toolforger said:
Um... guys? This discussion is a month old, but jme3 still sucks to set up in Eclipse for a game developer.
Its so easy to import jme into eclipse for development!
I'm using maven/m2eclipse for that:
1. svn checkout jme3 from trunk into "jme3"
2. git clone https://github.com/ahoehma/jme3-maven-helper
3. run "mvn install" in "jme3-maven-helper/jme3-thirdparty"
4. copy "jme3-maven-helper/jme3-buildhelper/pom.xml" into "jme3"
5. enable maven project nature for "jme3"
Works for me :)
in the early stages of jme3 there was some weirdness with getting it to compile with eclipse I dont know what it was exactly but I haven’t encountered it since…there is a bit of confusion for me with how bullet is organized now but I clear that up through trial and error but it didn’t take long, I generally don’t build jars anyways I’ll do that if or when I actually want to release something
Well bullet is actually pretty simple, you either pack jbullet or native bullet in build path. (usually for starters you want jbullet as it works fine out of the box)
I know its simple, the bullet source folders is what threw me off, I think I didn’t add “bullet common” or something like that at that time …was just expanding on why those eclipse files were put in the repo in the first place, all those years ago
Thats exactly the point why they have been removed now. A normal eclipse project cannot compile jME3 properly (it can only compile e.g. the desktop version for native bullet or the one for jbullet or the android version… Thats why we use industry standard ANT…
Heh. I’ve been avoiding / didn’t have the opportunity to learn Maven in the last few years 
Anyway, I would have been entirely unable to stick that incantation together. Starting with not knowing about your jme3-maven-helper repository - I think you’re cheating there, mate 
However, if it works to well, could somebody please add that hint to https://wiki.jmonkeyengine.org/legacy/doku.php/jme3:setting_up_jme3_in_eclipse ?
The maven repository is also not supported by us, if the guys who set it up don’t update it you’re screwed. Also they apparently use untested combinations with different lwjgl versions etc. So basically we cannot support any install using this repo.