Category Archives: FIRST Robotics

using eclipse launch configurations to deploy FRC robot code faster in eclipse

Posted on by
1

I use Eclipse launch configurations at work and coding at home all the time. It never occurred to me to mention them to the team until last week. A student asked “is there a way to use a keyboard shortcut to deploy.”

Before

For those not familiar with FRC (FIRST Robotics Challenge), the deployment procedure is:

  1. Select the project in your workspace.
  2. Click “Run”
  3. Mouse over “Run As”
  4. Click “WPILib Java Deploy”

This kicks off the Ant build to do the deploy. Certainly not a terrible process. But when you do this dozens of times and in a rush, it can feel tedious. I think that’s why I never suggested it. At the lab, I ensure the students always drive at the keyboard. So I never have to click four things to deploy and it doesn’t feel tedious. Whereas when I’m coding myself, I feel it and optimize my time/clicking.

Setting up a launch configuration

The first thing I did was show how to set up and favorite a launch configuration.

The initial setup:

  1. Run a build the “long way”
  2. “Run” > “External Tools” > “External Tools Configuration…”
  3. Click build.xml or build.xml (1) or whatever you see in the list. Confirm it is for this year’s robot. (You may find it easier to select all the build.* configurations, delete them and then run one new build.)
  4. Change the name to one that you like. For example, “2018 Robot”
  5. Click the “Common” tab
  6. Click “Display in Favorites Menu”
  7. Click “Apply”

Then to run it, you just click the triangle next to the launcher and it is stickied first in the list. (Be sure to click the triangle next to the green arrow with the red box. There’s also one without the red box which is used for running Java command line programs.)

This gets us down to two mouse clicks. But it is still not a keyboard shortcut; the initial request.

Keyboard shortcut

I had to look this up, but you can provide a keyboard shortcut. Sort of. I couldn’t figure out how to create a keyboard mapping to a specific run configuration. But that doesn’t matter here. We want to map to the last run configuration.

  1. Open the Eclipse preferences. (The Eclipse menu on a Mac and the Window menu otherwise)
  2. “General” > “Editor” > “Keys”
  3. Type “Run last” in the filter to find the matching entry
  4. Setup a binding. I chose command F + command R. (The beginning of spelling out FRC), but you can choose anything.
  5. note that the contest/when is “in windows”.  This means the shortcut is avilable when you have any file open. Just when you want when looking at or making robot code better.

maker faire and heat plan

Posted on by
Reply

Is there something with every other year and Maker Faire weather. In 2013, we exercised our rain plan and had a giant goldfish bowl of rain! In 2015, we used our rain plan again. Last year, it rained overnight, but not during the event. This year in 2017, I was excited about the weather. It was going to be shorts weather with not a cloud in the sky.

Turns out there’s a downside to that. It was too hot for the robots. On Saturday, the robots started overheating and we were caught by surprise. The RoboTigers made a sunhat for their robot:

On Sunday, we let the teams know what to expect. In particular to make sure the robots took breaks in the shade and not just the humans. The problem was there wasn’t much shade. So I made some with tablecloths. Elegant looking robots:

The Brooklyn Blacksmiths needed to cover a part of the robot so the motor didn’t overheat when running. They had a work glove around so added that. Then the robot became a high five robot!

We also brought a water cooler that we kept refilling so water was handy. Finally, when people around us left early, we expanded into their space. Good for us to have more space. And good for Maker Faire to not have that gap.

And we won a ribbon. In shorts and all!

building smart dashboard with gradle

Posted on by
Reply

FRC (FIRST Robotics Challenge) uses Ant to build the robot code. I think this is a wise choice since some teams are “internet challenged.” This hasn’t changed. What has changed since last year is that SmartDashboard uses Gradle to build. Our team is thinking about customizing Smart Dashboard this year which means we need to be able to build it.

Yesterday in the FRC lab, one of the StuyPulse team members asked me about Gradle. (I gave a really good overview of Ant last year so they remembered I knew build tools.) I explained the concepts of Maven/Gradle especially the local repository and dependencies. And I verbally explained how to run it. We didn’t get to do so together as there were other priorities for the day. And a lot of people weren’t at the meeting due to a competing school event. So I’m writing everything down in this post.

Building Smart Dashboard

The discussion was centered around building SmartDashboard. If you aren’t involved with a FIRST Robotics Competition team, this is a Java based UI used when running the robot. Conveniently that project comes with Gradle right in the project. So all you have to is:

  1. cd to directory you cloned SmartDashboard in
  2. chmod 700 gradlew
  3. ./gradlew build

Make sure you have internet before running this the first time. If you want to build directly from Eclipse, see my Eclipse Gradle post

Where is the output when building SmartDashboard

Running gradle creates a build directory. If you are using Eclipse, remember to hit refresh before looking for it. This build directory  contains a number of things:

  • distributions – a zipped up and tarred up version of SmartDashboard which includes the jar file, all need dependencies and the script to kick it off. This is what you need
  • classes – the compiled .class files
  • libs – a jar file with the compiled code in this project
  • reports – how well did you follow the coding standards established for this project
  • scripts – to launch SmartDashboard
  • temp – would you really expect to find something important in a directory named temp?

What does the Gradle build file do?
Gradle is a build tool. The build.gradle file in SmartDashboard contains Groovy code that declares what the build should do. Both Gradle and Maven follow “convention over configuration” which means that a lot is implied! I went over most (but not all) of this out loud in the classroom.

A plugin is like a helper tool that Gradle is going to use in order to build. For example, ‘java’ is going to compile among other things.  Most of these plugins are in common use. I hadn’t heard of the shadow before. A quick look tells me that it builds an uber jar (which is a distribution file that contains all the dependencies). That’s really useful. In fact, I have used the shade plugin which does the same thing in Maven. The WPILibVersioningPlugin is obviously specialized code for FIRST.

plugins {
    id 'java'
    id 'application'
    id 'com.github.johnrengelman.shadow' version '1.2.4'
    id 'maven-publish'
    id 'idea'
    id 'edu.wpi.first.wpilib.versioning.WPILibVersioningPlugin' version '1.6'
    id 'checkstyle'
}

Gradle needs to download files in order to run. This includes the plugins that we just saw along with dependencies – jars that the program needs. These files are hosted in a repository for binary files. A really common one is Maven Central. This is used by both Maven and Gradle builds to obtain binaries.

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

Those dependencies I just mentioned? Here they are. In this case, the dependencies are WPI code and common open source tools like JUnit (a testing library). Notice how all of these except the WPI one use the same format – three strings separated by colons? There’s a reason for this. When accessing Maven Central, you specify a GAV. This stands for group id/artifact id/version. The colons separate them. For example, jfree is a group id, jfreechart is an artifact id and 1.0.13 is a version.

Note that none of these four exhibits a “normal” GAV. You are supposed to use a fully qualified name for the group id. Just like we do for Java package names. An artifact id is lower case “words” separated by dashes if there is more than one word. Finally, you have an optional version number.  There can also be some optional information like a classifier that tells you what file extension you need. The WPI example does have a good group id. And the others have good artifact ids and versions. For more on the WPILib group id see this post.

dependencies {
    compile 'edu.wpi.first.wpilib.networktables.java:NetworkTables:+:desktop'
    compile 'junit:junit:4.12'
    compile 'jfree:jcommon:1.0.16'
    compile 'jfree:jfreechart:1.0.13'
}

Next the script specifies that we should create a jar file and an uber jar file named SmartDashboard.

jar {
    baseName = 'SmartDashboard'
}
shadowJar {
    baseName = 'SmartDashboard'
}

Now you see that this really is a Groovy script; it even has an if statement.

// Ensure that the WPILibVersioningPlugin is setup by setting the release type, if releaseType wasn't
// already specified on the command line
if (!hasProperty('releaseType')) {
    WPILibVersion {
        releaseType = 'dev'
    }
}

If the artifact is being published, details are here. WPI is publishing to this FIRST WPI Maven repo. They use the WPI Version Plugin and publish to the local Maven repo – which is the FIRST WPI Maven repo on their build server. (clarified in comment 65)

publishing {
    publications {
        maven(MavenPublication) {
            artifact(shadowJar) {
                classifier null
            }
            groupId 'edu.wpi.first.wpilib'
            artifactId 'SmartDashboard'
            version WPILibVersion.version
        }
    }
}

Getting close to the end. Now the build configuration says to use the coding conventions in the checkstyle.xml file. This is good. It means that people will have to follow coding conventions if they contribute back to SmartDashboard.

checkstyle {
    configFile = new File(rootDir, "checkstyle.xml")
    toolVersion = '6.19'
    if (project.hasProperty("ignoreCheckstyle")) {
        ignoreFailures = true
    }
}

In Java, you can automatically configure a Jar to run a certain class’ main method when you run the jar. This is specified in the manifest. Gradle can generate this manifest for you.

mainClassName = "edu.wpi.first.smartdashboard.SmartDashboard"

SmartDashboard comes with a fakeRobot test project. This is a submodule from Gradle’s point of view so it needs a build config too. Luckily you already know what plugins, dependencies and a main class are so this should be clear.

project(':fakeRobot') {
  apply plugin: 'java'
  apply plugin: 'application'

  dependencies {
      compile 'edu.wpi.first.wpilib.networktables.java:NetworkTables:+:desktop'
  }

  mainClassName = "edu.wpi.livewindowfakerobot.LiveWindowFakeRobot"
}

The end! The very last thing is to declare which version of Gradle this entire script should be run with.

task wrapper(type: Wrapper) {
    gradleVersion = '3.3'
}
  1.  

Output from building in gradle

I’m including the output from a “good” run in case you have problems and want to compare. This is for the first time you run it. After that the download steps won’t be in the output and it will run much faster.

$ ./gradlew build
Downloading https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-3.3-bin.zip
..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Unzipping /Users/jeanne/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-3.3-bin/64bhckfm0iuu9gap9hg3r7ev2/gradle-3.3-bin.zip to /Users/jeanne/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-3.3-bin/64bhckfm0iuu9gap9hg3r7ev2
Set executable permissions for: /Users/jeanne/.gradle/wrapper/dists/gradle-3.3-bin/64bhckfm0iuu9gap9hg3r7ev2/gradle-3.3/bin/gradle
Starting a Gradle Daemon (subsequent builds will be faster)
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/github/jengelman/gradle/plugins/shadow/1.2.4/shadow-1.2.4.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/gradle/plugin/edu/wpi/first/wpilib/versioning/wpilib-version-plugin/1.6/wpilib-version-plugin-1.6.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/ow2/asm/asm-commons/5.0.3/asm-commons-5.0.3.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/apache/ant/ant/1.9.4/ant-1.9.4.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/apache/ant/ant-parent/1.9.4/ant-parent-1.9.4.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/codehaus/groovy/groovy-backports-compat23/2.4.4/groovy-backports-compat23-2.4.4.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/ajoberstar/grgit/1.7.0/grgit-1.7.0.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/apache/ant/ant-launcher/1.9.4/ant-launcher-1.9.4.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/eclipse/jgit/org.eclipse.jgit/4.3.1.201605051710-r/org.eclipse.jgit-4.3.1.201605051710-r.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/eclipse/jgit/org.eclipse.jgit-parent/4.3.1.201605051710-r/org.eclipse.jgit-parent-4.3.1.201605051710-r.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/eclipse/jgit/org.eclipse.jgit.ui/4.3.1.201605051710-r/org.eclipse.jgit.ui-4.3.1.201605051710-r.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.jsch/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.jsch-0.0.9.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy-0.0.9.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.pageant/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.pageant-0.0.9.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.sshagent/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.sshagent-0.0.9.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.usocket-jna/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.usocket-jna-0.0.9.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.usocket-nc/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.usocket-nc-0.0.9.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/slf4j/slf4j-api/1.7.21/slf4j-api-1.7.21.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/slf4j/slf4j-parent/1.7.21/slf4j-parent-1.7.21.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch/0.1.53/jsch-0.1.53.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/googlecode/javaewah/JavaEWAH/0.7.9/JavaEWAH-0.7.9.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/sonatype/oss/oss-parent/5/oss-parent-5.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.core/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.core-0.0.9.pom
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/github/jengelman/gradle/plugins/shadow/1.2.4/shadow-1.2.4.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/gradle/plugin/edu/wpi/first/wpilib/versioning/wpilib-version-plugin/1.6/wpilib-version-plugin-1.6.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/ow2/asm/asm-commons/5.0.3/asm-commons-5.0.3.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/apache/ant/ant/1.9.4/ant-1.9.4.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/codehaus/groovy/groovy-backports-compat23/2.4.4/groovy-backports-compat23-2.4.4.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/ajoberstar/grgit/1.7.0/grgit-1.7.0.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/apache/ant/ant-launcher/1.9.4/ant-launcher-1.9.4.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/eclipse/jgit/org.eclipse.jgit/4.3.1.201605051710-r/org.eclipse.jgit-4.3.1.201605051710-r.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/eclipse/jgit/org.eclipse.jgit.ui/4.3.1.201605051710-r/org.eclipse.jgit.ui-4.3.1.201605051710-r.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.jsch/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.jsch-0.0.9.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.pageant/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.pageant-0.0.9.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.sshagent/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.sshagent-0.0.9.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.usocket-jna/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.usocket-jna-0.0.9.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.usocket-nc/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.usocket-nc-0.0.9.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/org/slf4j/slf4j-api/1.7.21/slf4j-api-1.7.21.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch/0.1.53/jsch-0.1.53.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/googlecode/javaewah/JavaEWAH/0.7.9/JavaEWAH-0.7.9.jar
Download https://plugins.gradle.org/m2/com/jcraft/jsch.agentproxy.core/0.0.9/jsch.agentproxy.core-0.0.9.jar
No .git was found in /Users/jeanne/Documents/workspace/SmartDashboard, or any parent directories of that directory.
No version number generated.
:compileJava
Download http://first.wpi.edu/FRC/roborio/maven/development/edu/wpi/first/wpilib/networktables/java/NetworkTables/3.1.5-20170105171843-1-g3e2631f/NetworkTables-3.1.5-20170105171843-1-g3e2631f.pom
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/jfree/jcommon/1.0.16/jcommon-1.0.16.pom
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/jfree/jfreechart/1.0.13/jfreechart-1.0.13.pom
Download http://first.wpi.edu/FRC/roborio/maven/development/edu/wpi/first/wpilib/networktables/java/NetworkTables/3.1.5-20170105171843-1-g3e2631f/NetworkTables-3.1.5-20170105171843-1-g3e2631f-desktop.jar
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/jfree/jcommon/1.0.16/jcommon-1.0.16.jar
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/jfree/jfreechart/1.0.13/jfreechart-1.0.13.jar
Note: Some input files use or override a deprecated API.
Note: Recompile with -Xlint:deprecation for details.
Note: Some input files use unchecked or unsafe operations.
Note: Recompile with -Xlint:unchecked for details.
:processResources UP-TO-DATE
:classes
:jar
:startScripts
:distTar
:distZip
:assemble
:checkstyleMain
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/6.19/checkstyle-6.19.pom
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/antlr/antlr4-runtime/4.5.3/antlr4-runtime-4.5.3.pom
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/antlr/antlr4-master/4.5.3/antlr4-master-4.5.3.pom
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/commons-cli/commons-cli/1.3.1/commons-cli-1.3.1.pom
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/com/puppycrawl/tools/checkstyle/6.19/checkstyle-6.19.jar
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/antlr/antlr4-runtime/4.5.3/antlr4-runtime-4.5.3.jar
Download https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/commons-cli/commons-cli/1.3.1/commons-cli-1.3.1.jar
:compileTestJava UP-TO-DATE
:processTestResources UP-TO-DATE
:testClasses UP-TO-DATE
:checkstyleTest UP-TO-DATE
:test UP-TO-DATE
:check
:build
:fakeRobot:compileJava
:fakeRobot:processResources UP-TO-DATE
:fakeRobot:classes
:fakeRobot:jar
:fakeRobot:startScripts
:fakeRobot:distTar
:fakeRobot:distZip
:fakeRobot:assemble
:fakeRobot:compileTestJava UP-TO-DATE
:fakeRobot:processTestResources UP-TO-DATE
:fakeRobot:testClasses UP-TO-DATE
:fakeRobot:test UP-TO-DATE
:fakeRobot:check UP-TO-DATE
:fakeRobot:build

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 1 mins 9.099 secs