Creating Separate WPIlib Installs on one User

[Bradley Boxer]

My team was recently accepted as a Beta Tester for the 2017 software. The eclipse plugins of the new software are different in ways that make previous year's code uncompilable when using them. In order to maintain backwards compatibility, we decided to manage two separate Eclipse installations. However, the WPIlib plugins always install to C:/Users/USER/wpilib. Is there any way to define this during installation? If not, what method would you recommend of maintaining backwards compatibility with the WPI plugins?

TL;DR
Is there any way to change the WPILib plugin installation directory?

Thanks so much,
Bradley Boxer
Team 303

[frcguy]

This is probably better suited to be answered through the discussion boards in TeamForge. To get there, click Discussion in the top navigation bar.

[Bradley Boxer]

Originally Posted by frcguy

This is probably better suited to be answered through the discussion boards in TeamForge. To get there, click Discussion in the top navigation bar.

Thanks, I will post there as well.

[Thad House]

Originally Posted by Bradley Boxer

My team was recently accepted as a Beta Tester for the 2017 software. The eclipse plugins of the new software are different in ways that make previous year's code uncompilable when using them. In order to maintain backwards compatibility, we decided to manage two separate Eclipse installations. However, the WPIlib plugins always install to C:/Users/USER/wpilib. Is there any way to define this during installation? If not, what method would you recommend of maintaining backwards compatibility with the WPI plugins?

TL;DR
Is there any way to change the WPILib plugin installation directory?

Thanks so much,
Bradley Boxer
Team 303

What differences are you seeing? The only change should be the location of the CANTalon package in Java. I'd be interested in hearing what else isn't working properly for you.

Regarding the multiple packages, I believe those locations are hardcoded into the plugins. I will take a look and see if there is anything we can do.

[fsilberberg]

Short answer is no, there's no easy way. Longer answer is to take a look at this issue: https://github.com/wpilibsuite/EclipsePlugins/issues/15. If you change your HOME environment variable and then fix up things inside eclipse, you can do it. I'd suggest instead just keeping a backup of the ~/wpilib directory and swapping it as needed. If you also have two eclipse instances, each with a different version installed, you can just delete the ~/wpilib directory and then let them restore it.

[Bradley Boxer]

Originally Posted by Thad House

What differences are you seeing? The only change should be the location of the CANTalon package in Java. I'd be interested in hearing what else isn't working properly for you.

Regarding the multiple packages, I believe those locations are hardcoded into the plugins. I will take a look and see if there is anything we can do.

In addition to the CANTalon problem we were seeing a weird eclipse error where the code would not compile if the plugins were not installed completely when eclipse started. The problem would be fixed by either generating a new blank robot project or going through each .java file and saving it again.

Originally Posted by fsilberberg

Short answer is no, there's no easy way. Longer answer is to take a look at this issue: https://github.com/wpilibsuite/EclipsePlugins/issues/15. If you change your HOME environment variable and then fix up things inside eclipse, you can do it. I'd suggest instead just keeping a backup of the ~/wpilib directory and swapping it as needed. If you also have two eclipse instances, each with a different version installed, you can just delete the ~/wpilib directory and then let them restore it.

Replacing the wpilib folder to match whichever installation we were running worked. Thanks!