Currently in the entire C API of WPILib we have ~8 different ways of handling strings. The C API actually isn't built for pure C callers (We don't actually have any of those). Instead, they're built for interop between languages like LabVIEW and C# which can talk to C API's directly.
For output parameters, the choice was fairly obvious. An output struct containing a const string pointer and a length makes the most sense. Its easy to use these from most other languages, and doesn't require special null termination handling. Freeing these is also easy, as if you ever receive one of these string structures, theres just a single function call to free it.
Input parameters are a bit more complex. To be used from pure C, and from LabVIEW, a null terminated string is the best in most cases. However, null terminated strings in general have a lot of downsides. Additionally, from LabVIEW there are other considerations around encoding that having a wrapper struct helps make a bit easier. From a language like C#, a wrapper struct is by far the easiest, as custom marshalling can make it trivial to marshal both UTF8 and UTF16 strings down.
The final consideration is its nice to have an identical concept for both input and output. It makes the rules fairly easy to understand.
WPILib will not have any APIs that manipulate a string allocated externally. This means WPI_String can be const, as across the boundary it is always const.
If a WPILib API takes a const WPI_String*, WPILib will not manipulate or attempt to free that string, and that string is treated as an input. It is up to the caller to handle that memory, WPILib will never hold onto that memory longer than the call.
If a WPILib API takes a WPI_String*, that string is an output. WPILib will allocate that API with WPI_AllocateString(), fill in the string, and return to the caller. When the caller is done with the string, they must free it with WPI_FreeString().
If an output struct contains a WPI_String member, that member is considered read only, and should not be explicitly freed. The caller should call the free function for that struct.
If an array of WPI_Strings are returned, each individual string is considered read only, and should not be explicitly freed. The free function for that array should be called by the caller.
If an input struct containing a WPI_String, or an input array of WPI_Strings is passed to WPILib, the individual strings will not be manipulated or freed by WPILib, and the caller owns and should free that memory.
Callbacks also follow these rules. The most common is a callback either getting passed a const WPI_String* or a struct containing a WPI_String. In both of these cases, the callback target should consider these strings read only, and not attempt to free them or manipulate them.
The CAN Stream API allows defining an buffer to receive an
arbitrary set of CAN messages, based on an ID and a mask. Messages
are added to this queue separate of other CAN APIs. This means the
messages can be receive without impacting other APIs such as
vendor APIs.
This enables things like detection of what devices are on the
bus, or custom decoding, without using vendor APIs.
Co-authored-by: Thad House <thadhouse1@gmail.com>
More functionality was implemented at the HAL level, so expose that to the wpilib level.
This also does units changes for all the PH related functionality.
In some cases, knowing roborio 2 might be useful. This also creates a higher level enum that might be usable later for the discussion on more complex runtime types.
- Twine, StringRef, Format, and NativeFormatting have been removed
- Logging now uses fmtlib style formatting
- Nearly all uses of wpi::outs/errs have been replaced with fmt::print() or
std::puts()/std::fputs() (for unformatted strings).
- A wpi/fmt/raw_ostream.h header has been added to enable
fmt::print() with wpi::raw_ostream
This makes code easier to read and more consistent between C++ and Java.
Also update clang-format settings to always add a line break (even if no braces are used).
This allows high-level library classes to implement enhanced simulation
support even if no low-level corresponding simulation library exists, and
avoids the need for bit-banging complex interfaces like SPI or CAN.
The old headers were moved into folders because doing so avoids polluting
the system include directories.
Folder names were also normalized to lowercase.
Also switch eventName and gameSpecificData to fixed 64-byte arrays to avoid mallocs and
extra NetComm calls. This behavior matches 2018 LabView.
The DS caching is kept in Java to avoid JNI and/or massive amounts of allocations.
This does not increase latency because Java still only hits NetComm once.
Moving the DS caching benefits all languages other than Java, because it avoids the need
for individual implementations. If caching is ever added to NetComm, it will then only be
necessary to remove it from the HAL and Java rather than all languages.
During shared library loading, a different libLLVM can be pulled in, causing
llvm symbols from dependent libraries to resolve to that library instead of
this one. This has been seen in the wild with the Mesa OpenGL implementation
in JavaFX applications (see wpilibsuite/shuffleboard#361).
This is clearly a very breaking change. For some level of backwards
compatibility, a namespace alias from llvm to wpi is performed in the "llvm"
headers. Unfortunately, forward declarations of llvm classes will still break,
but compilers seem to generate clear error messages in those cases
("namespace alias 'llvm' not allowed here, assuming 'wpi'").
This change also moves all the wpiutil headers to a single "wpi" subdirectory
from the previously split "llvm", "support", "tcpsockets", and "udpsockets".
Shim headers will be added for backwards compatibility in a later commit.
