What files to move where?, and why?

Started by Percy, December 11, 2014, 16:41:18

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Percy

Im new to graphical applications using apis that arent built in, this forum,(and to a lesser extent programming in general) however I was able to set up LWJGL 2 with a youtube tutorial, and wrote a simplistic game in it. I accidentally deleted the proper files from the project folder, and decided to upgrade to 3, since the project was not far along at all. The folder system seems to be different for 3.0 than 2. My questions are:
What exactly do the contents of each of the folders do, and where must they go? (or where should they go since i suppose you might be able to link to files in completely different folders)If I understand correctly, LWJGL is some sort of wrapper class for software written in a language that actually allows low level access to the gpu and binary ports etc., and something, I think the natives, are invoked when the software runs, and in a way, call commands during runtime in that other language, or (assembly language?) while something (possibly the jars?) is invoked at compile time as a kind of custom preprocessor? (only speculation on my part)I am not sure what the function of the platform-dependent natives are though, or what to do with the src and doc folders, one of which is oddly enough the only folder with any form of compression.
Sorry for this extremely novice question, I just was not able to find even information this simple online, considering how new 3.0 is...If you can point me to a tutorial that explains this I would be very grateful.

Kai

Hello Percy,

I see that you are eager to learn about the underpinnings of LWJGL and the JVM and of how all parts fit together on a bigger scale. First, this is a good attitude to have! :-)

But, on the other hand, your many questions touch quite some large number of topics that are not easily answerable in a single post.

Could you probably please stick to one question which you consider the most important?

As a first start, let me just pick one of your questions, that goes like "what folders are for what?".

Well, first provided you mean the folders in the zip archive of the LWJGL download, then those folders contain the following:

doc:

Contains a zip file with the JavaDoc files of the LWJGL sources. This is just a bunch of HTML files containing the documentation of the LWJGL API as nice HTML sites with hyperlinks to connect them nicely.

jar:

Your typical Java Archives, which contain the class files that make up the JVM-executable part of the LWJGL library.

native:

Contains, for each operating system and architecture, the needed JNI library, which LWJGL uses to access and call into native libraries, such as OpenGL, OpenAL and OpenCL.

But as said above, please stick to one answerable question at a time, and the LWJGL community will most likely be happy to help you out on it.

One thing at a time... :-)