Common location for Xith3D bits for webstart

Engines, Libraries and Tools Xith3D Forums
#1

Hi
Any chance of location somewhere where providers of JWS enabled xith projects can link to that contains all the jogl/xith/thirdparty jars, rather than including them all ourselves each time. It just seems to make more sence. Maybe a production versions of our apps will need our own tried and tested version of xith distributed, but all the time it’s tech demos and pre pre pre pre alpha code it seems sill to have to d/l xith for every project, one for testing kevs code, one for javacooldudes, one for the xith demos etc etc.

I’m nowhere near ready to JWS my app, but i’m thinking about these things already.

I could just link to the xith3d demo ones, but I don’t know if they are ever kept up to date except when adding new demos, and it’s only polite to ask :slight_smile:

Cheers

Endolf

#2

The problem is with something like Xith, the build I’m using might not be identical to the standard build (infront or behind). Hence, the demo will be tested against that version and might only work against it…

Kev

#3

Would be good, but what about the JAR signature? I don’t think it is a good way to deploy it with test signature…

Also 100% agree with Kev - I personally going to use customized builds of JOGL/Xith3D that incorporate some app-specific patches.

Yuri

#4

The problem is that we need a webserver which can cope with the high load an official Xith3D-JWS-store would cause. One possibility would be to store the signed Jars somewhere in the xith-tk CVS. After that an example jnlp-file could be put in the Getting Started Guide, so people can use it.

I don’t know if a central store for Xith3D related JWS files is a good idea. What I wrote is just a possible solution.

#5

[quote]The problem is with something like Xith, the build I’m using might not be identical to the standard build (infront or behind). Hence, the demo will be tested against that version and might only work against it…

Kev
[/quote]
Like I said, production stuff yes, but if your app breaks against a particular version, unless it’s an accident on the xith teams part, then it’s for a reason that you will need to update your code for anyway. Whilst it’s all just testing code I don’t see too much harm, maybe it’s just me. I’m assuming that the xith team would do some kind of testing before releasing their versions anyway, I wouldn’t expect these to be updated nightly from CVS or anything.

One possible solution, as the site currently has a current version, and then archives, why not have one version that is the latest, that anyone who doesn’t mind can link to, and then the option of linking to archived versions if one desires (obviously the latest version would need to be addedd to the archive streight away so you can link againts it whilst future proofing your app). This way we still only have one source and people only need to d/l each version once, but you can still link against a particular version if you are worried about your demo breaking :).

Endolf

#6

[quote]I personally going to use customized builds of JOGL/Xith3D that incorporate some app-specific patches.

Yuri
[/quote]
Ok, there will always be one awkward sod though :P, but in the general case i’m assuming most people will be running against some standard version.

Endolf

#7

I just don’t want to be rushed along on project development just because the “current” version of Xith has been updated.

All of things would be great if Xith had reached a stage where there was a baseline version, but as far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong, please :)), its still alpha and still has patches/fixes going in all the time. I don’t think any of the Xith3D jars I’ve uploaded have been a standard build yet.

At the moment, how would I know if the version of the Xith library I’m using has/hasn’t been added to the archive in the exact same format.

More important than all the above is probably Jens’ point about bandwidth. You’d get a fair few hits to support the library.

Kev

#8

Esspecially at the speed we develop things hey :wink:

[quote]All of things would be great if Xith had reached a stage where there was a baseline version, but as far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong, please :)), its still alpha and still has patches/fixes going in all the time. I don’t think any of the Xith3D jars I’ve uploaded have been a standard build yet.
[/quote]
Alpha 1 - alpha 8 exsist, thats the kind of thing I meant

[quote]At the moment, how would I know if the version of the Xith library I’m using has/hasn’t been added to the archive in the exact same format.
[/quote]
Because you d/l it when dave announces a new alpha upload :), or you get the newest one from the site when you go to do your testing

[quote]More important than all the above is probably Jens’ point about bandwidth. You’d get a fair few hits to support the library.
[/quote]
Ok, I think thats the best arguement so far for not doing it. I’m not sure what the agreement is with the hosts of xith3d.org for this kind of thing. It’s up to them, it was just a suggestion.

Endolf

#9

Yeah, well thanks for that :(. Sorry its not quite quick enough for you. The slow development speed just enforces things more. What little development I do get done I want to be on game not bringing code inline with a “current” alpha version which may well need changing again two minutes later.

Which still means I can’t work against the latest fixes. Then you’re going to say well you work against the latest build and release against the latest upload, but then I have to pick up everything in the latest build which might well break me… which brings us back to working to keep in check with Alpha code.

And I didn’t say it was a bad suggestion, just that it wouldn’t work for my current project. A standard install of Xith/Jogl/JRE on every windows/mac/linux machine made/delivered would be great too.

Kev

#10

[quote]The problem is that we need a webserver which can cope with the high load an official Xith3D-JWS-store would cause.
[/quote]
I take it you just need to store them somewhere?

If you get your libraries packaged in such a way that you can use them from a Maven-controlled project, there’s no real reason why you couldn’t get official releases put into the ibiblio repository:

http://maven.apache.org/
http://www.ibiblio.org/maven/

It’s mainly for web-technologies, but if you show there’s interest in having Xith in there, I expect they’d allow it. If you Maven-enable stuff like this, you get free hosting of official builds, and users get painless upgrades. Worth thinking about.

#11

I guess i’m the only one who thought it would be nice.

I’ll shut up and go work on my project now. :slight_smile:

Endolf

Edit: was in bad mood and misread some info, cleaned the post up.

#12

[quote]I guess i’m the only one who thought it would be nice.
[/quote]
Not really - I also think that for many developers this will be a big help.

Yuri

#13

I think it is a great idea. Have a Web Start extension installer jnlp file that always points to the latest version in CVS. Have another that always points to the latest STABLE version for each major release. Anyone that needs a specific version can always do what they are doing now.

#14

[quote]Anyone that needs a specific version can always do what they are doing now.
[/quote]
Agree 100%.

Yuri

#15

I have thought about this problem from the other way round - how to prevent people from doing this. I was worried setting up JWS on the xith.org server because bandwidth is not unlimited. If people started to really hit the server hard (and they could if it got popular) then I would have to take action.

Originally my idea was that if it happens, to only have the JWS links up for say between 8am and 9pm. Or some set time like that. That way nobody would link to them because their game would not work some of the time.

However, I have realised that this is not really a problem - and that the idea is probably not possible for several reasons:

[] It adds another point of failure - if xith.org is down OR the server with the game then no dice, however this is less important for hobby projects
[] People probably want more control over their Xith distribution and not want to see their game break due to some config change
[*] But the really problem is that the jars are signed by me, William Denniss. So really the only person who is in a position to use them are the people with access to my key. I do not believe it would work ‘hotlinking’ my jar files, but even if it was as I said, it would not be possible to allow it.

There are other options I am sure - most would mean getting Xith3D installed on someones computer negating the need to have it in JWS. An extension may be a great way to do that (I havn’t looked into them much yet). An non-jws related method doesn’t seem viable as you are losing most benifits of JWS.

The other major problem as mentioned earlier is the state of the API. Until Xith3D goes to version 1, and the developers guarentee some stability - no “shared” way is really possible. I would love to see Xith3D get to this stage and maybe even have installers for major operating systems, but currently it would be a definite burden on the developers to support legasy code.

Will.

#16

Well it does look like the fact that they are signed by two different people is a problem, see the last comment on this post: - http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?thread=331664&forum=38&message=1366904

Maybe when the Xith3D API goes stable, everyone could pitch in and fund this on a dedicated server? We might be able to get away with it on a shared server for a while, but if there are ten good games, say with only 100 hits per day, you are looking at ~5GB per day which is ~150GB a month. And that’s only 100 hits per day!

If we didn’t have to host JOGL as well then that would be MUCH better, but the JOGL API isn’t 100% stable either (maybe that will happen when it becomes javax.opengl?).

give it a while I reakon :slight_smile:

Will.

#17

[quote]Well it does look like the fact that they are signed by two different people is a problem,
[/quote]
It is a problem if jars are signed by more than one signature. Web Start barfs…(lame I should file a RFE). However there is no need to sign the jars again. If they are already signed reference them from a separate JNLP file.

#18

oops that was a typo, I meant “is not a problem” (meaning if you have a separate JNLP file).

I agree, an RFE on the issue would be good - it would be nice if it didn’t complain when a jar is signed twice.

When Xith3D does reach a level of maturity where shared libraries would be a good idea - I wounder if we could host them on dev.java.net? Sun doesn’t appear to be too worried about bandwidth (unlike I am for xith.org), and the server seems very reliable so it would seem to be a good choice. I’m not sure if they would welcome it however, but it is promoting Java & Gaming :slight_smile:

Will.

#19

I told you so