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Unread 13-11-2015, 16:03
randallh randallh is offline
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Re: Introducing Strongback, a Java library for FRC robots

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tparbotmail View Post
Thank you Randallh I will look at this tonight. Do you know if there is a way to upload the Java code to the rRio using a Linux or OS X machine?
Unfortunately, you do have to use a Windows machine and the NI software to update the roboRIO firmware and image the roboRIO. But once that is done, you can use Windows, OS X, or Linux to install the JRE and of course to deploy your robot code to the roboRIO.

To my knowledge, the WPILib plugin mechanism to deploy robot code just runs several Ant targets (e.g., `ant clean deploy`). When you add Strongback to your robot project, Strongback will change the project's `build.xml` file to override several Ant tasks, including `compile` and `deploy`, to be aware of and include Strongback (and other 3rd party libraries you add to `~/strongback/java/lib`). Strongback also adds several new Ant tasks, including `test` that compiles (if needed) and runs the project's JUnit tests. So deploy via the WPILib plugin should work, although our team prefers to run the unit tests, commit code to Git, and deploy using command line tools.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tparbotmail View Post
I am really uncomfortable with the dependencies this program has on Windows.
Are you referring to the need to use Windows to set up and configure the roboRIO? If so, then I do agree that it'd be nice to be able to do all that on Windows, OS X, or Linux.

But I hope you're not referring to Strongback, because as I mentioned above it is just a Java library and you can develop and deploy your robot code using Windows, OS X, and/or Linux.

Best regards
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