[Mike Copioli]

I understand your frustration with Wind River. This is our second year using it and we are still learning some of it quirks. Especially when it comes to debugging. This year it seems like we had to relearn the necessary steps to perform debug operations. Here are some things that we have learned through hours of pain. I hope these tips are helpful.

1. When in doubt reboot the cRIO and or Windriver.
2. When unsure if you have com PING everything and perform an IPCONFIG.
3. Right click the project and select Rebuild or clean build.
4. Ensure that you have the correct .out file and team number WINDOW->PREFERENCES->FIRST DOWN LOADER PREFERENCES
5. After building a project you need to check the Build Console and ensure that the .out file built for your current project.

There is a list of other steps that can be performed. I know that you have performed some of these already. It will be easier to assist you more when you post the error messages. One last thing that you should always do after loading code for release onto the cRIO is perform a power cycle or reboot. Do not perform this step if you are debugging as it will clear the code out of ram. Unfortunately it is difficult to provide you with an exact answer to your issues. There are so many ways that failure occurs and most of them are not documented but found via trial and error. This new system is very powerful and fast and provides the option to use a variety of software tools. Is it the correct solution for FIRST? In my opinion absolutely not. The pre 2009 control system had its limitations but at least a team could get code loaded and executing in less than 1 day. We only have 6 weeks, every minute of every day is of value. We are a veteran team who is software strong. We have mentors that develope software for both embedded and OS based systems. Even they spend the first few days just trying to get the tools to work. This is unacceptable and needs to change. Normally I do not post my opinion about these kinds of things I leave that to my brother, but in these last few days we have been experiencing more software tool related delays and I had been planning to post my concerns on CD to see if anyone else felt the same way as me.

I hope you get these problems solved and if you don't feel free to PM me and maybe we can assist you with your problem over the phone.