Introduction to ROSMOD¶

Visualizer Selection and Part Browser¶

The left panel is composed of two sub-panels (arranged vertically): the Visualizer Selection panel and the Part Browser panel. The Visualizer Selection panel allows the user to select between the available visualizations of the currently selected model object. This visualization affects the content and interaction of the center portion of the UI. The Part Browser panel displays the object types which can be created as children of the currently selected model object. Creation of objects can be achieved by dragging from the Part Browser panel into the center panel.

Active Object Visualization¶

The center panel displays selected visualization of the currently selected model object. The default visualization displays the children of the currently selected model object, and allows drag-and-drop from the Part Browser or Tree Browser into the center panel for creation (from part browser) or move/instance/copy (from the tree browser).

Tree Browser and Attribute Editor¶

The right panel is composed of two sub-panels (arranged vertically): the Tree Browser panel and the Attribute Editor panel. The Tree Browser panel allows the navigation of all the projects in the current model and all of their children objects in a tree. It also supports group selection, movement, copying, deletion, and drag/drop to other panels (for instance the Attribute Editor or the center panel). The Attribute Editor panel allows the editing of the currently selected model object’s Attributes and Pointers. Since pointers are references to other model objects, the user can drag an object from the Tree Browser onto a pointer of the selected model object to set that pointer. Note that the drop action will check to ensure that the object to which the pointer is being set belongs to the types of objects that are valid for that pointer to point to. If the object is of the correct type, the pointer will be set and it will show green while hovering over it; otherwise the pointer will show red and will not update the value.

Constraints¶

In the upper left of the UI, WebGME provides the utility to check the constraints defined in the meta. These constraints can be checked for just the currently selected model object, the selected model object and all its children, or the whole project. Upon completion it returns a form which specifies any constraints (e.g. containment cardinality) that have been violated and provides links to the offending objects.

Plugins¶

Finally, WebGME provides the infrastructure for executing Plugins, which can create, edit, or delete model objects in addition to creating and returning artifacts based on the model. Additionally, these plugins can spawn off other tasks (e.g. compilation).

Plugins can run on either the server or within the client browser, though not all plugins support execution on both of these platforms. When executing the plugin, the user will be presented with a dialog to specify the configuration of the plugin which may contain many fields of different types and may even ask the user to upload a file of a specific type (depending on the purpose of the plugin).

When the plugin has been configured and the user starts it, it begins execution and the user is free to continue interacting with and possibly editing the model.

While the plugin is executing, it may produce notifications (view-able in the bottom right) as a list that is clear-able; each notification received shows as a popup temporarily but is also saved into the list. The list is view-able by clicking on the Notifications button.

When the plugin completes (possibly terminating due to an error), the user is notified and may view the results of the plugin. The results are presented as messages and optionally some downloadable artifacts. Note that a plugin may have also altered the model (adding, removing, or editing).

Project Creation¶

To create a new project, you can either drag and drop a Project object from the Part Browser into the canvas when viewing the Projects root node or you can right click on the Projects root node of the Tree Browser and create a new child of type Project. Please note that you cannot drag a Documentation object into the Projects canvas to create a documentation object and that if you choose to create a Documentation object inside the Projects root node it will not be displayed in the RootViz visualizer which shows all the Projects and will not be included in any of the generated documentation.

Project Attributes¶

Each project has special Code Documentation attributes: Authors, Brief Description, and Detailed Description, which are best edited by clicking on the CodeEditor visualizer. This visualizer fills the canvas with a CodeMirror instance which allows the user to easily edit multi-line strings with:

• automatic saving when changes are made
• undo/redo
• syntax highlighting
• code completion, activated with ctrl+space
• code folding, using the gutter buttons or ctrl+q on the top of the code to be folded (e.g. start of an if block)

while allowing the user to configure (using drop-down menus):

• the currently viewed/edited attribute
• the current color theme of the code editor
• the current keybindings associated with the code editor (supported keybindings are sublime, emacs, and vim)

The CodeEditor visualizer is used in many places throughout the UI; any object that has attributes which support editing using the CodeEditor will display the CodeEditor as a selection in the visualizers list in the Visualizer Panel.

Project Plugins¶

While viewing a project, the user can run the following plugins:

• SoftwareGenerator: for generating and optionally compiling the software defined for the project according to the host architectures defined in the system models of the project.

  NOTE:: If you choose to download the software sources and compile them locally, you will need to run catkin_make -DNAMESPACE=ros to build against stock ros dependencies (in which case the operation deadline/priority settings and the SchedulingScheme of the component queue will not have any effect) or catkin_make -DNAMESPACE=rosmod to build with rosmod dependencies. In order to build with rosmod dependencies, you will need to have ROSMOD-COMM installed.

  NOTE:: When running a build on a project, the compilation is performed on one of each of the different types of hosts in the defined systems. Because many of the samples support execution on the RCPS cluster of 32 BeagleBone Blacks (BBB), a compilation process will be started on a BBB for the project if compilation is selected. Compilation on a BBB takes a long time (more than 5 minutes for a simple sample), so it is recommended that guests never issue a compilation request. By invoking the plugin without requesting compilation, the user will be able to download the most recently compiled binaries for that sample along with the code (they will be in the bin folder inside the returned compressed file).

• GenerateDocumenation: aggregates all the Documentation objects in the project’s tree, converts them to ReStructuredText and compiles them into html and pdf.

• TimingAnalysis: generates a Colored Petri-Net model for performing timing analysis on the deployments (software instanced on abstract hardware)

Saving/Exporting the Project¶

Currently there are two ways to save/export and Load a Project or sub-model (e.g. a System model).

The first way is to save a selected (sub-)tree of the WebGME model, by right-clicking on the sub-tree’s root (e.g. a System model) and selecting Export Library. This exported library can be shared among WebGME models and organizations. To load a library saved in this way, simply right-click on the parent node in the Tree Browser for which you want the library to be a child. Select Import/Update Library and choose the library file you like.

The second way is to go to the root of the WebGME model (i.e. the Projects node), and run the plugin ExportImport which will provide you a dialog to configure what you wish to do.