Has anyone tried to do a eclipse plugin for JOGL ?
Hi,
What king of plug-in do you mean?
Basically one that allows you to make a new JOGL project. The classpath should be automatically set to a jogl.jar and a java.libarary.path set to the natives for running jogl apps from eclipse. I think that such a plug-in might help novice user getting started and lower the entry barriers. It would also be nice if a similar plug-in where available for Netbeans.
// Tomas
Yes it will be a little easier, but setting up a jogl project with these IDE is not so hard… Maybe a good tutorial is enough.
But, it’s true, a plug-in can speed up the settings.
this would save you 15 clicks at most :
every jogl tut starts off with how to install it (besides, eclipse automatically includes it if you have it in the /ext/ dir), not to mention that newbies who fail at this should start with some other graphicslib 
I actually think that the problem is a bit bigger than that. Most half experienced java devs and non java OpenGL devs don’t know what java.library.path is and haven’t heard of unsatisfied link error. When they see jogl and try it they get the jogl.jar in place and compiles a application and then they run into unsatisfied link error, something they never heard of. You don’t start with reading tutorials if you feel that you have a bit of java knowledge. Why bother to even look at it if I can’t run it out of the box. Then it can’t be good.
I guess that most find out that they need to set java.library.path after they google and read a tutorial. But it will probably take them an hour or two and the perception of the lib aren’t that positive any more. I think that you just may have lost a couple of potential users just because of a silly entry barrier. Why try something new when you can stick with C/C++ or whatever that you used before that works out of the box.
I’ve used jogl at a couple of universities for teaching 3D graphics and the story keeps repeating. People just don’t get those simple things even when you have told them, showed them on powerpoint and have install instructions on the web. They still run into the same problem and they end up blaming the software.
Cheers
// Tomas 
I’m not trying to say that developers are stupid, just conservative and lazy like everybody else.
[quote]I’m not trying to say that developers are stupid, just conservative and lazy like everybody else.
[/quote]
Well it’s quite true. But I think it’s not so bad to learn a little about -Djava.library.path since a lot of projects are now using native libs to integrate more tightly into systems…
Using Jogl does not requires you to understand JNI, but just to remember that it uses native libs…
But it’s true that looking back at the https://jogl.dev.java.net/ page I don’t find a very clear document that can explain how to set up your dev environment.
Maybe making a good web page from the some threads here could help newcomers to get up with jogl…
Damit, now i only make oil painting, not jogl ones :-/
The precompiled natives are distributed in a .jar and most assumes that they should be in your classpath and of you go. Since that is what they are used to.
I really think that a eclipse plug-in would help newbie’s getting started. Once you have gotten started then you are hooked and interested to learn.
// Tomas