Re: specfiles for drivers

This seems like a pretty nice idea. Having a formally-specified 
description of drivers is a good way to do things like check a system 
for errors (e.g. missing dependencies, bad config options).

Geoff

On 10/06/10 06:14, Paul Osmialowski wrote:
> Hello developers,
>
> I was thinking about building some visual graphical utility for creating
> and maintaining Player configuration files (it may look like logisim
> program - boxes are player drivers, each with its own icon, lines are
> provides/requires dependency). As I am learning Python (never too late for
> it), I was considering to use tkinter canvas widget as a base for whole
> thing.
>
> My main problem here is that somehow I need to prepare database of all
> drivers with their provided and required interfaces and all command-line
> options. No one did it so far. I know that there is doxygen description
> added to each driver code, however this is still not well structured and
> not always up to date (see my latest cameracompress patch waiting on a
> tracker). I think there are more great ideas that cannot be implemented
> due to lack of structured driver definitions (at least I have some).
> I guess one day we need to prepare spec files for every driver and expect
> spec files for drivers submitted by contributors. As I prefer LISP-derived
> s-expressions over XML, my proposal is that it may look like these two
> examples:
>
> cameracompress.spec file:
>
> (def-driver cameracompress
>     (license "GPL")
>     (brief "jpeg compression and decompression routines")
>     (provide
>       (brief "Compressed image data is provided via a camera device.")
>       camera nokey always
>     )
>     (def-option check_timestamps
>       integer
>       (default 0)
>       (brief "If non-zero, timestamps are checked so only new images are compressed and published.")
>     )
>     (def-option save
>       integer
>       (default 0)
>       (brief "If non-zero, uncompressed images are saved to disk (with a .jpeg extension)")
>     )
>     (def-option image_quality
>       float
>       (default 0.8)
>       (brief "Image quality for JPEG compression")
>     )
>     (require
>       camera always nokey
>       (brief "Image data to be compressed is read from a camera device.")
>     )
> )
>
> or more sophisticated robotracker.spec file:
>
> (robotracker
>     (brief "Robot tracker that updates vectormap layer with shapes of given
> robots.")
>     (provide opaque always nokey (brief "not used, however it must be
> provided"))
>     (require vectormap always nokey (brief "map data accessibility"))
>     (def-option names (string-tuple 32) must-provide "non-empty list of
> robot names (vectormap layer objects)")
>     (require-multi 32 position2d always (multikey (option names)))
>     (def-option shape_x (float-tuple 2) (default (-0.01 0.01)))
>     (def-option shape_y (float-tuple 2) (default (-0.01 0.01)))
>     (def-option interval float (default -0.01) (brief "mimimal interval
> between map updates"))
>     (def-option min_x_change float (default -0.01) (brief "minimum change on
> X-axis to assume robot has moved"))
>     (def-option min_y_change float (default -0.01) (brief "minimum change on
> Y-axis to assume robot has moved"))
>     (def-option layer_name string (default "NONE") (brief "minimum change on
> Y-axis to assume robot has moved"))
>     (def-option workspaces_name (default "NONE") (brief "if not set to
> \"NONE\" this is the name of vectormap layer that will be filled-up with
> robots extents"))
>     (def-option depletion_zone (default 0.0) (brief "length of additional
> depletion zone in robot workspace"))
>     (def-option first2last_extent_name (default "NONE") (brief "if not set
> to \"NONE\" this is the name of additional vectormap object that will be
> added to workspaces layer to denote ex
>     (license "GPL")
> )
>
> What do you think about that?
>
> Paul
>
>
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