Hello again!
I've had another look at the ICE master branch, and it seems to me that there's a lot of dependency issues.
I haven't looked at the other feature branches available, but I can see that there are branches that (at least from the name) seems to be relevant :)
origin/jay/cleanup
origin/kgrs/viz/refactor
origin/UnifiedVizRefactor_NoReactor
What I've done so far is to clone the master branch, and only import the *.viz.* bundles into Eclipse. I also imported the org.eclipse.ice.viz.target.mars bundle, and set the target platform from it.
By doing this I'd expect to get no dependency issues, except for issues with some of the service bundles (more specifically the org.eclipse.ice.viz.service.visit and the org.eclipse.ice.viz.service.jme3 bundles, since I haven't set up any of the engines on
my system).
My initial thoughts are as follows:
1) What's the main goal of this cleanup/refactoring? I'd think that the viz bundles should be pretty standalone with regards to the rest of the ICE bundles. There are direct dependencies to org.eclipse.ice.client.widgets, org.eclipse.ice.analysistool and several
others. Of course if I start to add these, it just blows up with a cascade of other dependencies to other ICE bundles. I'd think that it's OK for ICE to depend on Viz for visualization, but not the other way around.
2) Viz should probably (when/if splitting part with ICE) have it's own separate target platform
3) It should be possible to just close the visit and jme3 plugins, and still don't get any errors. Right now there are dependencies from the more generic top level bundles to the visit/jme3 bundles (and even com.jme3.* in the org.eclipse.ice.viz.service.geometry
bundle). In my opinion the only bundle allowed to have dependencies to com.jme3.* is the org.eclipse.ice.viz.service.jme3.* bundles.
4) I see you use jMonkeyEngine for a lot of the math. Have you considered removing these dependencies by implementing the requred math stuff yourself? (maybe in a org.eclipse.ice.viz.math bundle) or use some other third party library?
Are there any other branches where any of the mentioned issues are addressed? Or am I sort of "barking up the wrong tree" here? :)
Med vennlig hilsen / Best regards,
Håvard Heierli-Nesse
Programutvikler – Konstruksjonsteknikk
Software developer – Structural engineering
MARINTEK (Norsk Marinteknisk Forskningsinstitutt
AS)
Address: POB 4125 Valentinlyst, NO-7450 Trondheim, Norway
From: Jay Jay Billings [jayjaybillings@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, December 18, 2015 8:44 PM
To: McCaskey, Alex
Cc: Håvard Heierli-Nesse
Subject: Re: Using Viz in our RCP application
Havard,
Very nice to meet you!
You might try the latest version of ICE's master branch in the Git repo. We have refactored many parts of the org.eclipse.ice.viz bundles and you shouldn't need any additional bundles now.
We are starting on the initial contribution for the Eclipse Advanced Visualization Project (EAVP). It must be approved for check-in first by the Eclipse Foundation, so I would say it will probably be available sometime in early January.
Please let me know how we can help. As Alex said, we're committed to helping you be successful with this project!
Jay