Data Structure(AP_IntX) in Ardupilot - c++

Recently i've been reading the source code of Ardupilot
ardupilot github
There are some data structures looks like AP_Int8 but i cannot find the definition of them. This is a code snippet in parameters.h
AP_Int8 takeoff_flap_percent;
AP_Int8 inverted_flight_ch; // 0=disabled, 1-8 is channel for inverted flight trigger
AP_Int8 stick_mixing;
However it does not looks like the simple Integer because in the source code I find that this AP_Intx has some methods in it, so it looks like a class
//Parameters.h
AP_Int16 format_version;
//Plane.h
// Global parameters are all contained within the 'g' and 'g2' classes.
Parameters g;
ParametersG2 g2;
//Parameters.cpp
// save the current format version
g.format_version.set_and_save(Parameters::k_format_version);
So the format_version has a method called set_and_save( ). I believe that AP_Int8 or AP_Int16 are some kind of structured classes but I really cannot find their definitions. I want to know all the methods in this class.

There's a couple of macros in AP_Param/AP_Param.h that define AP_... types, including AP_Int8.
See here.

Related

Project structure in C++ in relation to publicly exposed headers

I am trying to understand project structure in c++, I am finding it difficult to get my head around class structure and header files.
Extract from article 1 (linked at bottom of this post)
By convention, include directory is for header files, but modern practice > suggests that include directory must strictly contain headers that need
to be exposed publicly.
My first question of this process is with regards to a separate class file that is within the include directory.
What is purpose of exposing your headers?
Following on from this, looking at an example of an exposed header file. Linked in the following GH repo: https://github.com/AakashMallik/sample_cmake
How does the Game_Interface class relate back to the Game_Engine?
game_interface.h
#pragma once
#include <game_engine.h>
class GameInterface
{
private:
GameEngine *game;
public:
GameInterface(int length);
void play(int num);
};
I have looked else where for a simple explanation of this process but, all I have found so far is nothing that can be understood in the context of this example.
Fairly new to C++ background in web technologies.
Link to article 1: https://medium.com/heuristics/c-application-development-part-1-project-structure-454b00f9eddc
What is purpose of exposing your headers?
Sometimes you may be developing some functionality or a library. You might want to help some other person or customer or client by sharing the functionality of your code. But you don't want to share the exact working details.
So for instance you wish to share an Image processing functionality which applies beautiful filters to it. But at the same time you don't want them to exactly know how did you implement it. for such scenarios, you can create a header file, say img_filter.h having function declaration -
bool ApplyFilter(const string & image_path);
Now you can implement entire details in img_filter.cpp:
bool ApplyFilter(const string & image_path)
{
....
// Implementation detail
...
}
Next you can prepare a dll of this file which could be used by your client. For reference of working, parameters, usage etc. you can share the img_filter.h.
Relation with Interface:
A well defined interface is generally nice to have so you can change implementation details transparently, which means, that HOW you implement the details don't matter as long as the interface or the function name and parameters are kept intact.

c++ best way to realise global switches/flags to control program behaviour without tying the classes to a common point

Let me elaborate on the title:
I want to implement a system that would allow me to enable/disable/modify the general behavior of my program. Here are some examples:
I could switch off and on logging
I could change if my graphing program should use floating or pixel coordinates
I could change if my calculations should be based upon some method or some other method
I could enable/disable certain aspects like maybe a extension api
I could enable/disable some basic integrated profiler (if I had one)
These are some made-up examples.
Now I want to know what the most common solution for this sort of thing is.
I could imagine this working with some sort of singelton class that gets instanced globally or in some other globally available object. Another thing that would be possible would be just constexpr or other variables floating around in a namespace, again globally.
However doing something like that, globally, feels like bad practise.
second part of the question
This might sound like I cant decide what I want, but I want a way to modify all these switches/flags or whatever they are actually called in a single location, without tying any of my classes to it. I don't know if this is possible however.
Why don't I want to do that? Well I like to make my classes somewhat reusable and I don't like tying classes together, unless its required by the DRY principle and or inheritance. I basically couldn't get rid of the flags without modifying the possible hundreds of classes that used them.
What I have tried in the past
Having it all as compiler defines. This worked reasonably well, however I didnt like that I couldnt make it so if the flag file was gone there were some sort of default settings that would make the classes themselves still operational and changeable (through these default values)
Having it as a class and instancing it globally (system class). Worked ok, however I didnt like instancing anything globally. Also same problem as above
Instancing the system class locally and passing it to the classes on construction. This was kinda cool, since I could make multiple instruction sets. However at the same time that kinda ruined the point since it would lead to things that needed to have one flag set the same to have them set differently and therefore failing to properly work together. Also passing it on every construction was a pain.
A static class. This one worked ok for the longest time, however there is still the problem when there are missing dependencies.
Summary
Basically I am looking for a way to have a single "place" where I can mess with some values (bools, floats etc.) and that will change the behaviour of all classes using them for whatever, where said values either overwrite default values or get replaced by default values if said "place" isnt defined.
If a Singleton class does not work for you , maybe using a DI container may fit in your third approach? It may help with the construction and make the code more testable.
There are some DI frameworks for c++, like https://github.com/google/fruit/wiki or https://github.com/boost-experimental/di which you can use.
If you decide to use switch/flags, pay attention for "cyclometric complexity".
If you do not change the skeleton of your algorithm but only his behaviour according to the objets in parameter, have a look at "template design pattern". This method allow you to define a generic algorithm and specify particular step for a particular situation.
Here's an approach I found useful; I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but maybe it will give you some ideas.
First, I created a BehaviorFlags.h file that declares the following function:
// Returns true iff the given feature/behavior flag was specified for us to use
bool IsBehaviorFlagEnabled(const char * flagName);
The idea being that any code in any of your classes could call this function to find out if a particular behavior should be enabled or not. For example, you might put this code at the top of your ExtensionsAPI.cpp file:
#include "BehaviorFlags.h"
static const enableExtensionAPI = IsBehaviorFlagEnabled("enable_extensions_api");
[...]
void DoTheExtensionsAPIStuff()
{
if (enableExtensionsAPI == false) return;
[... otherwise do the extensions API stuff ...]
}
Note that the IsBehaviorFlagEnabled() call is only executed once at program startup, for best run-time efficiency; but you also have the option of calling IsBehaviorFlagEnabled() on every call to DoTheExtensionsAPIStuff(), if run-time efficiency is less important that being able to change your program's behavior without having to restart your program.
As far as how the IsBehaviorFlagEnabled() function itself is implemented, it looks something like this (simplified version for demonstration purposes):
bool IsBehaviorFlagEnabled(const char * fileName)
{
// Note: a real implementation would find the user's home directory
// using the proper API and not just rely on ~ to expand to the home-dir path
std::string filePath = "~/MyProgram_Settings/";
filePath += fileName;
FILE * fpIn = fopen(filePath.c_str(), "r"); // i.e. does the file exist?
bool ret = (fpIn != NULL);
fclose(fpIn);
return ret;
}
The idea being that if you want to change your program's behavior, you can do so by creating a file (or folder) in the ~/MyProgram_Settings directory with the appropriate name. E.g. if you want to enable your Extensions API, you could just do a
touch ~/MyProgram_Settings/enable_extensions_api
... and then re-start your program, and now IsBehaviorFlagEnabled("enable_extensions_api") returns true and so your Extensions API is enabled.
The benefits I see of doing it this way (as opposed to parsing a .ini file at startup or something like that) are:
There's no need to modify any "central header file" or "registry file" every time you add a new behavior-flag.
You don't have to put a ParseINIFile() function at the top of main() in order for your flags-functionality to work correctly.
You don't have to use a text editor or memorize a .ini syntax to change the program's behavior
In a pinch (e.g. no shell access) you can create/remove settings simply using the "New Folder" and "Delete" functionality of the desktop's window manager.
The settings are persistent across runs of the program (i.e. no need to specify the same command line arguments every time)
The settings are persistent across reboots of the computer
The flags can be easily modified by a script (via e.g. touch ~/MyProgram_Settings/blah or rm -f ~/MyProgram_Settings/blah) -- much easier than getting a shell script to correctly modify a .ini file
If you have code in multiple different .cpp files that needs to be controlled by the same flag-file, you can just call IsBehaviorFlagEnabled("that_file") from each of them; no need to have every call site refer to the same global boolean variable if you don't want them to.
Extra credit: If you're using a bug-tracker and therefore have bug/feature ticket numbers assigned to various issues, you can creep the elegance a little bit further by also adding a class like this one:
/** This class encapsulates a feature that can be selectively disabled/enabled by putting an
* "enable_behavior_xxxx" or "disable_behavior_xxxx" file into the ~/MyProgram_Settings folder.
*/
class ConditionalBehavior
{
public:
/** Constructor.
* #param bugNumber Bug-Tracker ID number associated with this bug/feature.
* #param defaultState If true, this beheavior will be enabled by default (i.e. if no corresponding
* file exists in ~/MyProgram_Settings). If false, it will be disabled by default.
* #param switchAtVersion If specified, this feature's default-enabled state will be inverted if
* GetMyProgramVersion() returns any version number greater than this.
*/
ConditionalBehavior(int bugNumber, bool defaultState, int switchAtVersion = -1)
{
if ((switchAtVersion >= 0)&&(GetMyProgramVersion() >= switchAtVersion)) _enabled = !_enabled;
std::string fn = defaultState ? "disable" : "enable";
fn += "_behavior_";
fn += to_string(bugNumber);
if ((IsBehaviorFlagEnabled(fn))
||(IsBehaviorFlagEnabled("enable_everything")))
{
_enabled = !_enabled;
printf("Note: %s Behavior #%i\n", _enabled?"Enabling":"Disabling", bugNumber);
}
}
/** Returns true iff this feature should be enabled. */
bool IsEnabled() const {return _enabled;}
private:
bool _enabled;
};
Then, in your ExtensionsAPI.cpp file, you might have something like this:
// Extensions API feature is tracker #4321; disabled by default for now
// but you can try it out via "touch ~/MyProgram_Settings/enable_feature_4321"
static const ConditionalBehavior _feature4321(4321, false);
// Also tracker #4222 is now enabled-by-default, but you can disable
// it manually via "touch ~/MyProgram_Settings/disable_feature_4222"
static const ConditionalBehavior _feature4222(4222, true);
[...]
void DoTheExtensionsAPIStuff()
{
if (_feature4321.IsEnabled() == false) return;
[... otherwise do the extensions API stuff ...]
}
... or if you know that you are planning to make your Extensions API enabled-by-default starting with version 4500 of your program, you can set it so that Extensions API will be enabled-by-default only if GetMyProgramVersion() returns 4500 or greater:
static ConditionalBehavior _feature4321(4321, false, 4500);
[...]
... also, if you wanted to get more elaborate, the API could be extended so that IsBehaviorFlagEnabled() can optionally return a string to the caller containing the contents of the file it found (if any), so that you could do shell commands like:
echo "opengl" > ~/MyProgram_Settings/graphics_renderer
... to tell your program to use OpenGL for its 3D graphics, or etc:
// In Renderer.cpp
std::string rendererType;
if (IsDebugFlagEnabled("graphics_renderer", &rendererType))
{
printf("The user wants me to use [%s] for rendering 3D graphics!\n", rendererType.c_str());
}
else printf("The user didn't specify what renderer to use.\n");

Converting Protobuf to ROS messages with similar functionality

I recently inherited a large codebase at work utilizing MOOS & Protobuf messages.
At the request of my project lead, I am porting it to use exclusively ROS where ROS messages are used instead of protobuf. The code base heavily relies on utilizing protobuf functionality such as enumerator min / max, extracting a string from the variable field, ->has_variable() function, ->isValid(), etc.
So far I have only been able to find very basic ROS message functionality from the wiki.
Are there any 'hacks' or the like to have this type of pliability?
Example: Protbufs support enumerators, but ROS messages don't, so I have:
uint8 TYPE_FAILED = 0
uint8 TYPE_OPERATIONAL = 1
uint8 TYPE_INITIALIZING = 2
uint8 health_state_type
My health_state_type is my 'enumerator' but I don't have a min or max unless I hardcode one, and I can't extract TYPE_FAILED as a string. I've been slowly finding workarounds for this by using
my_message::custom_msg health;
health.health_state_type = health.TYPE_FAILED
But I'm having to modify many different areas that use it as a string, not integer.
Yes there is a hack. But you need to input a some work into it.
For using the publisher/subscriber methods in ROS you need to define messages for all topics in .msg files.
From this file then a C++ class is automatically generated. But you don't want to touch that autogenerated file! What you could do instead is define your class and associate it with the autogenerated class.
Look here for an example how to do it. You could then expand your custom class with desired methods like isValid.
Another (perhaps simpler) way would be to declare a helper class that would do the desired work for each type in messages.
Or you could simply continue to use protobuf. It is also used at least in Gazebo if not also in ROS.
Sometime ago I wrote some auto generation scripts that consume Protobufs and produce ROS headers (not the msg files) to transmit Protobuf blobs over ROS comms. This would satisfy your need without having to duplicate a Protobuf definition with a supporting ROS msg definition. Code.

How to exchange custom data between Ops in Nuke?

This questions is addressed to developers using C++ and the NDK of Nuke.
Context: Assume a custom Op which implements the interfaces of DD::Image::NoIop and
DD::Image::Executable. The node iterates of a range of frames extracting information at
each frame, which is stored in a custom data structure. An custom knob, which is a member
variable of the above Op (but invisible in the UI), handles the loading and saving
(serialization) of the data structure.
Now I want to exchange that data structure between Ops.
So far I have come up with the following ideas:
Expression linking
Knobs can share information (matrices, etc.) using expression linking.
Can this feature be exploited for custom data as well?
Serialization to image data
The custom data would be serialized and written into a (new) channel. A
node further down the processing tree could grab that and de-serialize
again. Of course, the channel must not be altered between serialization
and de-serialization or else ... this is a hack, I know, but, hey, any port
in a storm!
GeoOp + renderer
In cases where the custom data is purely point-based (which, unfortunately,
it isn't in my case), I could turn the above node into a 3D node and pass
point data to other 3D nodes. At some point a render node would be required
to come back to 2D.
I am going into the correct direction with this? If not, what is a sensible
approach to make this data structure available to other nodes, which rely on the
information contained in it?
This question has been answered on the Nuke-dev mailing list:
If you know the actual class of your Op's input, it's possible to cast the
input to that class type and access it directly. A simple example could be
this snippet below:
//! #file DownstreamOp.cpp
#include "UpstreamOp.h" // The Op that contains your custom data.
// ...
UpstreamOp * upstreamOp = dynamic_cast< UpstreamOp * >( input( 0 ) );
if ( upstreamOp )
{
YourCustomData * data = yourOp->getData();
// ...
}
// ...
UPDATE
Update with reference to a question that I received via email:
I am trying to do this exact same thing, pass custom data from one Iop
plugin to another.
But these two plugins are defined in different dso/dll files.
How did you get this to work ?
Short answer:
Compile your Ops into a single shared object.
Long answer:
Say
UpstreamOp.cpp
DownstreamOp.cpp
define the depending Ops.
In a first attempt I compiled the first plugin using only UpstreamOp.cpp,
as usual. For the second plugin I compiled both DownstreamOp.cpp and
UpstreamOp.cpp into that plugin.
Strangely enough that worked (on Linux; didn't test Windows).
However, by overriding
bool Op::test_input( int input, Op * op ) const;
things will break. Creating and saving a Comp using the above plugins still
works. But loading that same Comp again breaks the connection in the node graph
between UpstreamOp and DownstreamOp and it is no longer possible to connect
them again.
My hypothesis is this: since both plugins contain symbols for UpstreamOp it
depends on the load order of the plugins if a node uses instances of UpstreamOp
from the first or from the second plugin. So, if UpstreamOp from the first plugin
is used then any dynamic_cast in Op::test_input() will fail and the two Op cannot
be connected anymore.
It is still surprising that Nuke would even bother to start at all with the above
configuration, since it can be rather picky about symbols from plugins, e.g if they
are missing.
Anyway, to get around this problem I did the following:
compile both Ops into a single shared object, e.g. myplugins.so, and
add TCL script or Python script (init.py/menu.py)which instructs Nuke how to load
the Ops correctly.
An example for a TCL scripts can be found in the dev guide and the instructions
for your menu.py could be something like this
menu = nuke.menu( 'Nodes' ).addMenu( 'my-plugins' )
menu.addCommand('UpstreamOp', lambda: nuke.createNode('UpstreamOp'))
menu.addCommand('DownstreamOp', lambda: nuke.createNode('DownstreamOp'))
nuke.load('myplugins')
So far, this works reliably for us (on Linux & Windows, haven't tested Mac).

In the .cpp, is there a way to auto-implement all the functions from its .h?

I think this would increase the quality of life when devving, but google came up with nothing and I couldn't find anything specific inside inside Netbeans either.
What I want is to start with this header:
class bla
{
public:
static void gfg(somearg asd);
};
Then I open the blank bla.cpp and pressed 'autoimplement'. After that, it would look like this:
#include "bla.h"
static void bla::gfg(somearg asd)
{
//TODO: implement
throw unimplemented("void bla::gfg(somearg) is unimplemented");
}
Anyone know of a tool like this?
I found http://www.radwin.org/michael/projects/stubgen/
"stubgen is a C++ development tool that keeps code files in sync with their associated headers. When it finds a member function declaration in a header file that doesn't have a corresponding implementation, it creates an empty skeleton with descriptive comment headers."
This looks like it does exactly what you want it to do.
Some time has passed and in the meantime the requested feature seems to have been implemented in netbeans. Refer to https://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=213811 , which also gives a description on how to use it:
Note:
Implemented CTRL+SPACE.
IDE suggest implementing of class method if CTRL+SPACE was pressed:
- inside file that already has at least one method definition
- between method declarations