[Coco] Full GUI DriveWire 4 beta

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Steven Hirsch <snhirsch at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Dec 2010, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>
>> I'm honestly not sure this is something that you want to mess with.
>
> I'm beginning to agree with you.  I develop complex design-automation
> software for a living (in C++, thankyouverymuch), but Eclipse and Java just
> bring me to my knees.  Why, for the love-of-mike does it have to be so
> complicated??  I've never seen more controls, modes, widgets and precisely
> used (but undefined) terminology in my entire life!
>
> At work, I'm forced to use Lotus Notes for corporate communications and HR
> interaction.  Don't take this the wrong way, but Eclipse strikes me as the
> Lotus Notes of software development :-).  The Notes motto is:
>
> "Why have one concise way to do things if you can implement a dozen
> variations and unintuitive modes to reach the same point?"
>
>> To build the GUI, you will need the SWT libraries, which may or may
>> not have been installed when you did whatever you did to install
>> Eclipse.  I always just "install" eclipse by downloading the zip file
>> from the eclipse website, seems to be as easy as downloading and
>> unpacking it wherever, ready to go.  Anyway, the SWT libs can be found
>> here: http://www.eclipse.org/swt/ or maybe via your package manager.
>>
>> Things will go smoother if these libraries are already present when
>> the import into eclipse is done.  If you don't have the SWT libs
>> already, I'd recommend deleting whatever is currently in Eclipse,
>> getting the libs, and doing an import.
>>
>> To properly import the UI, choose File, Import, General > Existing
>> Projects into Workspace, and point it at wherever the "DriveWireUI"
>> directory you checked out from cvs is.
>>
>> You can then right click on the head of the newly created DriveWireUI
>> project in Eclipse and choose "Run" to execute it immediately, or
>> Export, Java >> Runnable Jar File to create a standalone .jar.
>
> All the libraries are present and I've explictly added everything I believe
> it was complaining about to my class paths.  Doesn't make any difference,
> it's still carping about missing XML..something.
>

Well, this is a clue that something went wrong, as there should not
have been any complaints to begin with if the import process went
correctly and the environment (stock Eclipse plus the SWT library)
were in place.   All the dependencies are included with the source in
the CVS repository, there is nothing additional required.

I've helped a handful of people set the DW build environment up, and
had a few more email me who did it themselves.  It used to be sort of
tedious but I've improved it to where, for me at least, creating the
environment on a new machine takes only a few minutes.  I haven't any
experience with an Eclipse that comes out of a package management
system, and I suspect the deviation from the normal results may have
something to do with this.

If you're interested in helping with the coding of DriveWire, I'll
gladly spend time to help you get your setup working, but if you just
want to run the finished product, please just wait for me to build one
for your platform.

As for Java, it's the worst possible language to use for DriveWire,
except for all the others.  Java has delivered a DriveWire server
where a single version runs on over 30 platforms, and a client that,
while requiring a build for each target platform, does not require a
single change to a single line of code in order to support them all.
I don't think there is any other language that could deliver this.





> Grrrrrr.
>
> My hat is off to anyone able to master Eclipse, Java, et al.
>
> Steve
>
>
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