[brlcad-news] BRL-CAD Ported to Microsoft Windows, Perspectives and Appreciation

[Christopher S M. <br...@ma...>]

After more than 20 years of active on-going development, BRL-CAD is now ava=
ilable for the Microsoft Windows platform.  This new availability marks the=
 beginning of the official adoption of the Windows operating system as a fu=
lly supported BRL-CAD development and release platform.  Following with the=
 recent release announcement of BRL-CAD 7.8.0, special thanks and historic =
perspectives are in order for this considerable achievement.

This "new" platform is added to an extensive BRL-CAD portability heritage t=
hat includes systems such as a DEC VAX-11 running 4.3 BSD, DECStations runn=
ing ULTRIX, SGI 4Ds running various versions of IRIX, Sun-3 and Sun-4 Sparc=
s running SunOS, the Cray 1, Cray X-MP, and Cray Y-MP running UNICOS, the C=
ray 2, DEC Alpha AXP running OSF/1, Apple Mac II running A/UX, iPSC/860 Hyp=
ercube running NX/2, Alliant FX/8 & FX/2800, Gould SEL, PowerNode, Gould NP=
1, NeXT, HPPA 9000/700 running HPUX, Ardent/Stardent, Encore Multi-Max, and=
 much much more.  BRL-CAD's extensive portability of course also includes a=
 plethora of common desktop and server versions of MacOS, Linux, BSD, IRIX,=
 and Solaris likely making BRL-CAD the most cross-platform CAD system ever.

Now added to that list of platforms is support for Windows, further extendi=
ng the package's portability and cross-platform legacy.  The Windows port c=
urrently provides support for the Windows 2000 and Windows XP family of ope=
rating systems.  Additional variations of the Microsoft Windows platform re=
main under on-going consideration depending on community interest, open sou=
rce developer involvement, and organizational funding.

Special thanks is deserved to many groups and individuals that helped make =
the port to Windows possible.  This includes the extensive development, con=
sultative, administrative, and testing support of several organizations inc=
luding the TNO Prins Maurits Laboratory, Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellsch=
aft mbH (IABG), Quantum Research International, Inc., the U.S. Army Aviatio=
n and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC),  CG2, I=
nc., SURVICE Engineering, Inc., and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL)=
.  In particular, special individual thanks and recognition are deserved to=
 Chris Pitts, Sean Morrison, Daniel Ro=DFberg, and Bob Parker for their dir=
ect developer contributions to the Windows port as well as the indirect con=
tributions of the BRL-CAD user community and others.

To provide a little bit of historic perspective, the port of BRL-CAD to Win=
dows has long been a consideration for the project.  While BRL-CAD was spec=
ifically written to take advantage of UNIX-style computational environments=
 and adopting the UNIX-like tradition of succinct tools that perform specif=
ic tasks -- a position that doesn't inherently lend itself well to the Wind=
ows platform -- there has long been an acknowledgment of the community inte=
rest to have BRL-CAD on Windows.

Attention to the Windows port fluctuated over the years, with several group=
s porting the BRL-CAD libraries to Windows with relative ease but few attem=
pting to address the direct porting of BRL-CAD's 400+ binary applications. =
 The most comprehensive Windows port effort was started several years ago t=
hrough efforts of friends at AMRDEC and CG2 where they managed to address s=
everal critical platform issues, port all of the core libraries, and also p=
ort several of the core binary applications including the 'mged' geometric =
modeler and the 'rt' ray-tracer.  Their efforts were integrated into BRL-CA=
D and expanded upon with development testing, an initial beta release, and =
increased interest commencing after the 2002 BRL-CAD Users Group Meeting.  =
Work continued over the following years with the porting effort being consi=
derably accelerated after the package was released as Open Source software =
through build system contributions, source code modifications, and feature =
requests.

Culminating with this year's official release, the port achieved a stable r=
elease status through the extensive work of SURVICE working under agreement=
 with ARL.  The port of BRL-CAD to Windows now includes the majority of the=
 core applications and all of BRL-CAD's libraries.  Efforts continue toward=
s improving functionality and including even more of the auxiliary applicat=
ion binaries remaining to be added to the Windows distribution.  Additional=
ly, SURVICE graciously provided the new Archer graphical geometric modeler =
which is already included in the Windows release and will soon be made avai=
lable on all distribution platforms.

The port to Windows marks a new beginning for the project and an expanded p=
otential for the CAD community to become involved in making BRL-CAD the mos=
t powerful solid modeling system available.  Allowing any user or developer=
 to become directly involved in the improvement of the package, BRL-CAD is =
the only solid modeling CAD system available under flexible Open Source Ini=
tiative (OSI) approved open source terms.  This allows BRL-CAD to be active=
ly developed by the open source community with a veritable abundance of pro=
ven and existing capabilities to build upon.=20

---
BRL-CAD is a powerful cross-platform constructive solid geometry solid mode=
ling system that includes an interactive geometry editor, ray-tracing suppo=
rt for rendering and geometric analysis, path-tracing for realistic image s=
ynthesis, network distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-process=
ing tools, and a robust high performance geometric representation library. =
 BRL-CAD is the primary tri-service CAD system used by the U.S. military to=
 model weapons systems for vulnerability and lethality analyses.  Binary an=
d source distributions are available on the Sourceforge project website:  h=
ttp://sourceforge.net/projects/brlcad/

See the BRL-CAD website at http://brlcad.org for documentation and more inf=
ormation.