Load custom DSDL about gui_tool HOT 6 CLOSED

Thanks Antoine, it is needed by others. Please do implement that. ;)

There have been attempts to implement this feature in the past, but IIRC they ended up being unsuccessful.

How are you planning to implement that exactly? Are you perhaps going to add an environment variable specifying the look up paths, or is it going to be a GUI element where the user can specify the look up path manually? I think both approaches make sense.

from gui_tool.

I am not sure of the best way to implement it. I am not very familiar with (Py)Qt, so I think an environment variable would probably be the easiest for me, but not the most user friendly.

Also do you think having it in the bus monitor is enough or is there any other place where it could be useful ?

from gui_tool.

environment variable would probably be the easiest for me, but not the most user friendly.

Fine. Do you think it makes sense to implement that on the level of PyUAVCAN? We have a line here where the default DSDL definitions are loaded: https://github.com/UAVCAN/pyuavcan/blob/master/uavcan/__init__.py#L183. We could extend that code so that it queries the environment variable and loads DSDL from the locations specified in the variable.

Also do you think having it in the bus monitor is enough or is there any other place where it could be useful ?

Having it only in the bus monitor is definitely not enough. There are other parts of the application, such as the plotter, the subscriber tool, and the console, where the user may need access to the custom definitions. Implementing the support for environment variable on the level of PyUAVCAN will take care of that.

from gui_tool.

I have just discovered an undocumented feature in PyUAVCAN. Have a look:

paths = [os.path.join(dsdl_path, "uavcan")] + paths
custom_path = os.path.join(os.path.expanduser("~"), "uavcan_vendor_specific_types")
if os.path.isdir(custom_path):
    paths += [f for f in [os.path.join(custom_path, f) for f in os.listdir(custom_path)]
              if os.path.isdir(f)]

Missing documentation entries have been added to the GUI Tool and PyUAVCAN docs.

That said, we still very much want the capability to point the location where to load the custom DSDL from via GUI.

from gui_tool.

Interesting. It should be good enough for my application, thanks!

from gui_tool.

Solved in #27

from gui_tool.