Gladius, Long and Windy

‹prev | My Chain | next›

I remain unsure what to work on for my next book. There was much interest in Javascript gaming. I do not know it well enough to gauge how mature it is, but I know how to find out...

I am going to start with Gladius, the 3d gaming engine from Mozilla. First up, I clone it locally:

➜  repos  git clone https://github.com/alankligman/gladius-core.git
Cloning into 'gladius-core'...

That takes a little while, but once I have the repository, it seems that I need to make setup:

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) make setup
make: *** No rule to make target `setup'.  Stop.

Or not.

Hrm... there's not even a Makefile in there (and what is a Jakefile?):

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) ls -1
Jakefile
lib
LICENSE
node_modules
package.json
README.md
src
tests
tools

The Jakefile seems to be a node thing, but there is no mention of setup. Gladius core bundles several NPM modules, but jake is not one of them:

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) npm ls
/home/chris/repos/gladius-core
├── amdefine@0.0.2 
├─┬ jshint@0.6.3 
│ ├── argsparser@0.0.6 
│ └─┬ minimatch@0.0.5 
│   └── lru-cache@1.0.6 
├─┬ qunit@0.5.1 
│ ├── argsparser@0.0.6 
│ ├─┬ bunker@0.1.1 
│ │ └─┬ burrito@0.2.11 
│ │   ├── traverse@0.5.2 
│ │   └── uglify-js@1.0.7 
│ ├─┬ cli-table@0.0.1 
│ │ └── colors@0.3.0 
│ ├── tracejs@0.1.4 
│ └── underscore@1.3.3 
├── requirejs@1.0.8 
└── uglify-js@1.2.6 

Let's see if installing it globally (so that it can run as an executable) will work:

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) npm install -g jake
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/jake
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/jake
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/jake/-/jake-0.2.33.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/jake/-/jake-0.2.33.tgz
/home/chris/local/node-v0.6.15/bin/jake -> /home/chris/local/node-v0.6.15/lib/node_modules/jake/bin/cli.js
jake@0.2.33 /home/chris/local/node-v0.6.15/lib/node_modules/jake

And...

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) jake setup
jake aborted.
Error: Cannot find module 'jake'
    at Function._resolveFilename (module.js:332:11)
(See full trace by running task with --trace)

After running with --trace, I find that the error is coming from the Jakefile. Despite not being bundled with the rest of the NPM packages, it seems that I really do need it:

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) npm install jake
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/jake
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/jake
npm WARN prefer global jake@0.2.33 should be installed with -g
jake@0.2.33 ./node_modules/jake

Yah, no kidding, NPM. I tried to install it globally and that didn't work.

After all that, it turns out that there is no setup task in the Jakefile or in the included files:

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) jake setup
jake aborted.
Error: Unknown task "setup"
    at [object Object].nextPrereq (/home/chris/local/node-v0.6.15/lib/node_modules/jake/lib/task/task.js:154:19)
(See full trace by running task with --trace)

So what happens if I just run the default task?

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) jake
jake aborted.
TypeError: Object [object Object] has no method 'exec'
    at [object Object].action (/home/chris/repos/gladius-core/tools/jake-tasks/default.js:15:8)
(See full trace by running task with --trace)

Sigh. It seems that the "jake tasks" included in the Jakefile expect a locally installed jake. So I explicitly run that locally installed jake and am able to build (but still not setup):

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) ./node_modules/.bin/jake build

Tracing dependencies for: ../tools/almond

/home/chris/repos/gladius-core/dist/gladius-core.js
----------------
/home/chris/repos/gladius-core/lib/../tools/almond.js
/home/chris/repos/gladius-core/lib/_math.js
...
/home/chris/repos/gladius-core/lib/../src/core/engine.js
/home/chris/repos/gladius-core/lib/../src/core/gladius-core.js

That seems to have created a gladius-code.js in dist:

➜  gladius-core git:(develop) find . -mmin -10         
.
./.git
./.git/index
./dist
./dist/gladius-core.js
./dist/gladius-core.min.js

So now it's time to use this. Since I already seem to be in node-land, I install express.js globally and use that to generate an express.js site for myself:

cd $HOME/repos
mkdir gladius-my
cd gladius-my
git init .
npm install -g express
express .
npm install

I comment out the default, "index" route in the generated apps.js:

// ...
// Routes

// app.get('/', routes.index);
// ...

Instead, I copy the contents of the example page into public/index.html. I do update the <script> tag to point to gladius-core.js in express.js' /javascripts/ path:

...
<head>
  <script src='/javascripts/gladius-core.js'>
  </script>
...

Lastly, I copy the generated gladius-core.js files into publics/javascripts:

cp ../gladius-core/dist/gladius-core.* public/javascripts

And...

That does not work. It seems that gladius has switched to requirejs for library loading. Bah! I like requirejs, but that marks one too many obstacles to overcome in one night. I will pick back up with this tomorrow.



Day #403