I would like to use a build of the current allwpilib project

[cpapplefamily]

I seem to be missing the final step to the process. I did follow the Building WPILib in the read me along with running ./gradlew build and that seemed to work without fail. I even ran ./gradlew publish and the machine buzzed and whirled and created some more outputs.

But now how do I get these into the programing environment to try the new features?

[auscompgeek]

There's a doc for this: https://github.com/wpilibsuite/allwpilib/blob/master/OtherVersions.md

Perhaps this needs to be put in a more obvious place?

[calcmogul]

That's already linked from https://github.com/wpilibsuite/allwpilib#using-development-builds in the main readme.

[cpapplefamily]

Thanks, Well that black magic to me. I did read through that but didn't blindly follow the step because I didn't know what I was looking at. I was looking for a more obvious way to point the project to the new libraries.

I'm definitely curious to how that all works, but can see building locally and using the local would be good to test my own edits but just to get the latest and possibly greatest the Development Build is the way to go.

[prateekma]

Is there anything we can do to make that document clearer?

[cpapplefamily]

For a NOOB like me in this environment maybe make it clear that adding the few lines of code to the build.gradle will on the NEXT build of that project either fetch the most resent versions of the WPILib files from either the online location or the local build of the WPILibs you created in the previous steps.

Again for me I expected that I was going to need to copy the created files from the ./gradlew publish step to the C:\Users\Public\wpilib\2020... directory for my FRCVSCode to utilize them. (Like I do when I want to use my copy of RobotBuilder using the in app VSCode launcher)

The Black magic for me is how does the following code

wpi.maven.useFrcMavenLocalDevelopment = true
wpi.wpilibVersion = 'YEAR.424242.+'

Tell the build robot code to look at directory = mystery on my computer to create the robot.jar file and subsequently all the view dependency and intellisense linting.

[ThadHouse]

Ok, we can update the docs to make that clearer.

As for what those 2 commands do.

wpi.maven.useFrcMavenLocalDevelopment = true tells gradlerio to instead of looking in the wpilib/2020 folder or online, instead look first at where the wpilib publish places the outputs. Gradlerio does all the dependency management, VS Code just hooks into it.

wpi.wpilibVersion = 'YEAR.424242.+' tells gradlerio to look for a specific version of wpilib. By default, gradlerio is locked to a specific version, because wildcards cause issues with offline functionality. So the version has to change. 424242 is there because we need a marker to make local builds and development builds published online to be different, otherwise dependency management can get a little weird.

[cpapplefamily]

I suspect this should warrant its own new thread but this process is what got me to this point. Tying both the Local and Development Build strategies build great, but deploying to the robot results with NO Code. The RioLog loops the following error:

58.332: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: edu/wpi/first/math/MathShared
58.333: at frc.robot.Main.main(Main.java:31)
58.338: Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: edu.wpi.first.math.MathShared
58.339: at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.BuiltinClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
58.340: at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.ClassLoaders$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
58.341: at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
58.342: ... 1 more

Is there something that needs to be done with the RIO or is this a bug?

[AustinShalit]

Hi @cpapplefamily. Sorry about that. Take a look at the instructions here about how to fix that bug: wpilibsuite/GradleRIO#422 (comment)

This has already been fixed but the fix has not been published to the latest version of GradleRIO yet. Add the linked JSON content as a file in the vendordeps folder of your project.

[cpapplefamily]

Thanks after some educated guesses creating the WPILibMath2020.json from looking at line one "fileName": in the vendor depo folder Bazzinga.

The rabbit hole I'm in is to get the liveWindow PIDsubsystem functions working again

[AustinShalit]

We are still thinking about how to do that too.

#2792

[ThadHouse]

The file name in there actually doesn't matter. The only reason it exists is so when you download the file off the internet for the online install method in VS Code, it knows what to name it. To GradleRIO, that name is irrelevant and never even checked. Glad its working now.

Normally that isn't needed for general development builds. This year was a special case because math got split to its own library for build reasons.

[cpapplefamily]

We are still thinking about how to do that too.

#2792

Doesn't leave much hope for me, i would have needed alot of breadcrumbs to trace out how it all worked, but I'll watch that issue and engage when appropriate.

[cpapplefamily]

Am I expecting the wrong thing here? So I attempted to change the AnalogPotentiometer Livewindow return value so I edited the C:\Users\Robotics\FRCProjects 2021\WPILIB_allwpilib\wpilibj\src\main\java\edu\wpi\first\wpilibj\AnalogPotentiometer.java file here:

@Override
  public void initSendable(SendableBuilder builder) {
    if (m_analogInput != null) {
      //m_analogInput.initSendable(builder);
      builder.setSmartDashboardType("Analog Input");
      builder.addDoubleProperty("Value", this::get, null);
    }
  }

I then performed a ./gradlew build followed by adding the

wpi.maven.useFrcMavenLocalDevelopment = true
wpi.wpilibVersion = 'YEAR.424242.+'

to my build.gradle but drilling to the deffenition of the AnalogPotentiometer.class in my project does NOT revile the change.

[cpapplefamily]

I'm a Dunce.. I must Read all the words. I did it once two days ago so I thought I had it.

So Obvious.

[cpapplefamily]

@AustinShalit but not so fast. I ran ./gradlew build then ./gradlew publish using the Developer PowerShell in Visual Studio. I'm in the c:\Users\Robotics\FRCProjects 2021\WPILIB_allwpilib witch is the root of the file system. Yet no joy or change to the expected class.

[sciencewhiz]

After you did the publish of allwpilib, did you do a build of your robot program?

[cpapplefamily]

Yes I attempted to build the robot project as well.

I know I did the wrong thing here and that is changed two variables but I went ahead and re-cloned the repo but allowed it to clone to the directory it wanted to goto. C:\Users\Robotics\source\repos\allwpilib I also changed the name of my publish folder from C:\Users\Robotics\releases to C:\Users\Robotics\releases_BCK forcing the publish to recreate the directory. I observed the only version in that directory was the one I created on the 20th. It was not getting overwritten or additional versions.

So with these two changes the allwpilib ./gradlew build took way longer like it did on the 20th. Earlier before the re-clone and directory name change builds were only 4 mins and publish was 1min. I wrote this off as I already did it once before maybe it only needs to modify the new files.

So now my robot project did update and my expected edits do appear in the robot code. I'll continue to monitor my actions and see if things act up again or behave.

[cpapplefamily]

Oh and one final note I also observed the new clone and resulting publish is year 2021. So that is new from last week.
and
sequential publishes adds a new rev to the relevant folders.