Re: Java-bridge to breve

On Apr 5, 2005, at 7:06 AM, Mathis Hofer wrote:

> Hi Jon
>
> We are two Computer Science students from Switzerland and we want to 
> do our semester project with breve.
>
> Our first goal is to provide a Java-interface to breve such that 
> simulations can entirely be written in Java, without ever knowing 
> about steve.
>
> There is the JavaTest.tz example in the breve/java/ directory, but 
> that's probably not what we want. This is the way to access Java 
> libraries (e.g. instanciate Java objects and so on...) from steve, 
> right?

The JavaTest example will do what you want, I think.  The JavaTest 
example instantiates a copy of the java classes java.lang.String (a 
standard class) and JavaTest (a class in the Java directory).  It then 
calls java methods in the JavaTest object transparently from steve.

There is no way, at the moment, to call breve methods from Java.  So 
while Java objects can be used for computation, it's not currently 
possible to write an entire simulation in Java.

> By searching the mailinglist archives we found a post from October 
> 2004 where you wrote (see 
> http://lists.spiderland.org/pipermail/breve/2004-October/000358.html):
> "There is some code and APIs in place to allow for this, but there is
> currently no out-of-the-box solution.  I do have most of a Java bridge
> written as a plugin (source code in the plugins directory of the source
> distribution), but it hasn't been updated for breve 2.0 yet."
>
> Is this still ongoing? You also wrote you look for Java/JNI users that 
> will port it to other platforms than Mac OS X.
> Well, we're interested in porting it to GNU/Linux. Is the source code 
> of this Java-bridge still available online? If not, can you send it to 
> us or tell us where to download?

The bridge has been greatly improved since that message, but is still 
not supported on Linux.  I have been able to get it to work on Linux, 
but it requires a number of environment variables, etc, to be set.  I'd 
like it to work transparently for the user before it's officially 
supported.

The current breve CVS source code includes the java bridge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/breve

The first step is to get the configure script to run with JVM support.  
This will likely involve setting the environment variables LDFLAGS and 
CPPFLAGS to reflect the location of your JNI SDK.

If that works, you should be able to build breve and run the JavaTest 
simulation.  Remember to compile the JavaTest.java file, and run breve 
from the same directory.

Let me know if you run in to trouble!

- jon klein

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