RobotPy 2010.beta2

[Peter Johnson]

I've just released a new version of RobotPy (Python for FRC), 2010.beta2. The RobotPy site has moved to FIRST Forge at the encouragement of Brad Miller at WPI; please update your bookmarks. The new location is:

http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/projects/robotpy

Major changes from 2010.beta1 release:

• Separate packages for the Python core (interpreter and libraries) and the WPILib module. The Python core itself no longer depends on WPILib. This decoupling will allow for separate releases of WPILib for different years (e.g. for beta testing or maintaining old robot code).
• Dynamic loading support for binary modules; many of the standard Python modules are now dynamically loaded (as is WPILib). This will make it easier to distribute additional modules as separate packages in the future as well (e.g. NumPy).
• RobotBase, SimpleRobot, and IterativeRobot classes are now provided.
• You can now derive Python classes from PIDSource, PIDOutput, SpeedController, and Joystick and pass the derived classes to WPILib (e.g. PIDController). This enables custom PID control in Python.

The wiki pages at FIRST Forge contain the most recent documentation. In the coming weeks I plan to work on improving the documentation further; currently it mostly describes the differences between the C++ WPILib and the Python version.

I expect to complete translation of 294's 2010 robot program to Python on Wednesday. When I post it for download I will also make an announcement here.