NEW 2009 Control System Released

[Eldarion]

Originally Posted by yoyodyne

Wow! I kind of figured that along with the new WPILib being open source there also would not be per-seat licensing for the new control system development environment. I guess it was naive of me but I figured that is why we would be getting a "custom" NI build. If there is, it is really going to negatively impact the way our team develops and unit tests software. Do you think that there will be license costs from both Wind River and NI? If that is the case, then there will be an impact to the teams that take the C route as well.

I agree 100% with the above.

One other issue that I haven't seen brought up here is platform lock-in. With the old system, teams could use Windows, Linux, or Mac to program the robot with, and the robot code itself was fairly portable between microcontrollers. In addition, low-level C programming is pretty much standard in the embedded systems world, so students are gaining real-world experience with direct application to industry.

With the new control system, you are locked to Windows, regardless of the method you use to program. LabView will run on Linux; the software that it uses internally to generate the VxWorks image will not (BTW I don't think Wine will solve this problem unless you can get an entire LabView install into Wine along with the other tools.)

If you decide to use LabView to program, the problem is even worse. LabView programs cannot be used on anything that is not directly supported by LabView, or converted to another, more standard programming language! Also, I question the applicability of LabView programming knowledge in industry--sure, some large companies and colleges have access to LabView, but most do not due to the extremely high cost involved.

The OS lock-in problem will only get worse when Vista takes over--I have spoken with many developers who cannot stand Vista and have switched to Linux, finding it better suits their needs.

Just some futher thoughts, feel free to comment on them...