Is WhirlyGlobe dead?

That's the question I always ask when a project's blog has gone dark.  Github and google code are populated with the dried out husks of open source dreams past.  WhirlyGlobe isn't one of them.  Or at least not yet.  I've just been busy.

If you check out the WhirlyGlobe 2.0 repository on github, you'll see a steady stream of updates.  2.0 isn't quite ready to ship, but it's getting close.  My list of things to do is below two digits at this point.  One of them deserves a bit more discussion.

WhirlyGlobe Component

The single biggest problem I have with WhirlyGlobe is that it's, apparently, a complete bitch and a half to understand.  I mean, hey, it's just a combination of Objective C/C++, OpenGL ES, a bunch of dependent open source libraries, and multi-threading.  Like that's hard?  What?

Okay, that's kind of hard.  Now I'm doing something about it.

For the high end user, your iPad melting kind of app that swaps gigabytes of data in and out on the fly... you're stuck.  Suck it up.  But for the low end, I'm making a nice self contained component.

On the compile side, it's one single package that contains all the weird stuff I pull in.  No more compiling Eigen or downloading Boost and Shape and Clipper.  It's all in the library.  The mistakes you can make compiling it are few and easy to fix.

On the development side, the component is... well it's just the one component.  You create a WhirlyGlobeViewController, add its view your view hierarchy and off you go.  It will manage the threading, selection, interaction, and tear down.  All stuff that confused the hell out of people.

Oh, and no more direct C++ exposure.  It's all Objective-C from the outside.

The Future

It's starting simple, of course, with a standard interaction model (think WhirlyGlobeTester) and just the basic markers, vectors, and labels.  For imagery I'll support the old texture groups and the new quad tree data sets (both local and network) so that'll be a bit more exciting.  Then we'll just see where it goes.

Supporting a more general purpose vector data set is going to be tricky.  I'll have to see what's possible and, frankly, who comes in with paying work.  On the plus side, most people are interested in a whole lot of images and just a few vectors.  The Component will work well for that.