So, a while back I was looking at this tutorial on the wiki and I noticed that the code there declares two private methods: adjustLightFixture and adjustRotatePivotViaMeta. However, I don't see anything that calls either of them. I thought that was odd but soon moved on to rendering a different way so forgot about them.

 

Now, some time later, I happened to find people using the adjustLightFixture in their code posted on forums, github, etc. -- and most of them weren't calling it, either! I get the feeling they simply took it from the tutorial without knowing any better.

 

Is there some reason those methods need to be there as they are? Unless I'm missing something, I think it's just confusing people. I would just edit the wiki myself but I don't want to do alter anything without running it by some more experienced Minecraft modders. Also, I don't know if it'd be better to delete them outright or to put those methods in a separate "extra options" section for those who might benefit from them. Adjusting rotation based on metadata certainly makes sense in many instances... however I'm not entirely sure that the adjustLightFixture is actually necessary at all since the lighting looked okay without it (though I haven't carefully scrutinized the lighting differences between them).

Have you placed a System.out.println(); call in those two methods to see if the are called by a super class anywhere? That would probably answer your question as to whether or not they are called.

 

If in doubt, use System.out

@Kwibble, these are private methods -- if they're not being called in the class, they're unlikely being called anywhere.

 

@Tuhljin, when I write code I often include "helper" functions that I find occasionally useful.  If I'm creating a tutorial I sometimes leave them in the code even if they aren't being used in my example.  For example, in my Model tutorials I have a set of classes called spinX(), spinY(), spinZ() that I use for debugging of rotation points.  Of course in my case I try to explain in my tutorial what those do, but my point is that I do sometimes include methods in my classes that don't happen to be used.

 

So I think your suspicion is right that they are just potentially useful methods that the author either left for interest's sake or forgot to remove at some point.

 

I usually let my IDE help find all that stuff.  Usually Eclipse will give warnings about unused fields and methods.

Whoops >.> I read that as protected.