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Documentation Table of Contents

• Documentation Errors
• Setup/Building
• Configuration/Distributed OS
• Graphics/Scene Graph/Database
• Python
• Miscellaneous

Documentation Errors

• Need to emphasize that shared libs must be copied into the exe directory!
• Should explain about "data bundles" and how this is related to good programming practices.
• Should explain how to use the ar_log() API (and why to use it instead of cout/cerr).
• Should explain how to use arTexFont (and especially how to make the fonts).

Setup/Building

- Thread-safety issues... The Irix port does, indeed, seem to be working. However, it seems sensitive to having an appropriately configured compiler. (or maybe a recent enough version). Specifically, if the following test program compiles and runs for a minute or two, then syzygy will run and be stable.

  #include
  #include
  #include
  using namespace std;
  void* task1(void*){
    cout << "YYYY\n";
    while (true){
      string temp("yyy_test_name");
    }
    return NULL;
  }
  void* task2(void*){
    cout << "XXXX\n";
    while (true){
      string temp("death_by_xxx");
    }
    return NULL;
  }
  int main(int, char**){
    cout << "#####################################################\n";
    pthread_t ID1, ID2;
    pthread_create(&ID1,NULL,task1,NULL);
    pthread_create(&ID2,NULL,task2,NULL);
    // wait forever
    pthread_join(ID1, NULL);
  }

The compile script for Irix is simple. Here, we are assuming that the program name is test.cpp.

  CC -n32 -LANG:std -c test.cpp
  CC -n32 -LANG:std -o test test.o -lpthread

NOTE: This would probably catch the thread safety problem on RedHat 7.x as well (?). Haven't really felt like re-installing something that ancient to find out.

• The very latest fmod is NOT compatible with the headers we had previously.

Configuration/Distributed OS

• Phleet needs new methods! Specifically, we must be able to release services. Also, need to be able to get service info from the command line!
• BUG: if someone is looking for a service on network X but the service is offered on network Y, the connection won't work, but the service will disappear from dpending. - Same computer name in szg.conf file on multiple computers impairs the system. We should be more robust!

Graphics/Scene Graph/Database

• The node method calls are woefully inefficient for large arrays because they do not use prtIn.
• dgSetGraphicsDatabase must be eliminated! (getting closer to this goal...)
• The light direction seems to be wrong! (i.e. direction = (0,0,10,0) instead of direction = (0,0,-10,0)
• 3DS objects cannot have multiple parts! (i.e. only a single mesh element, which means only a single material). Very bad!

Python

• Must deal with the python examples (i.e. make them fit into the pattern...)

Miscellaneous

• On OS X (at least on 10.3), there is a strange memory leak. Specifically, the statement

      list<arDatabaseNode*> foo = graphics_node.getChildren();
  

  causes a memory leak!
• q33 does NOT run successfully when built with Visual Studio 6 on Win32. Visual Studio 7 is needed.
• cubecake will NOT run on Xandros Linux (complains about glXGetProcAddress not being present).
• jpeglib gotcha. IMPORTANT. On the Windows side, it seems that the jpeglib MUST be compiled by the same version of Visual Studio that you are using to compile your executables. Otherwise, the first call to the library will produce a segfault. Why this should be for a C library is unclear.
• When arMotionstarDriver is run on Win32, it seems to make the Motionstar "stutter". Does not seem to be a problem on Linux.
• It would be helpful to have a string event type for the I/O framework (i.e src/drivers).
• Our global init means that sockets cannot be declared globally! (the solution is to eliminate the global init for WinSock, i.e. arCommunicatorHelper) and make the arSZGClient do the init in it's init OR, if no arSZGClient, we will go ahead and explicitly do it.
• The arDataServer should allow specific-socket-sending via HANDLES only. This is because it actively manages the sockets (and there's the possibility of a stale pointer). Another way to deal with this would be to add an event processing API, so that socket delete occurs a little less automatically, and to add reference counting to the socket class.
• A weird bug. In standalone mode, with joystick (as in the standalone landspeeder), if the pforth filter is in the old style (PForth_programs.xml) instead of the new style (*.pf in PForth) then the program segfaults with an error message "arSyncDataServer error: start called before init".
• Fix documentation to show how to use meshes (.obj and .3ds files) in master/slave framework apps.

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