Our code for the 2015 season and following off-season.
This code was run on our robot at the Lake Superior Regional and is currently being worked-on for reference and practice.
This README is intended as a complicated set of instructions for this repository, which will likely apply to future robot code projects.
To contribute to this GitHub account, you must first have your workstation set up! If you have yet to install the FRC development suite, you can do this by following the 2015 FRC Control System steps. Since this robot program is written in Java, specifically follow the directions for "FRC Java Programming;" there isn't much need for the C++ or LabVIEW stuff since we don't use it.
Once you've gotten everything set up, clone the repository into a directory somewhere. You can just clone this into your "My Documents" folder if you're on Windows, or the equivalent if you're on a Mac. It is recommended to create a dedicated "Development" folder, even with "Git", "GitHub", and "frc2503" nested subdirectories, to keep everything nice and neat.
$ cd <directory>
$ git clone https://github.com/frc2503/r2015.git r2015The above command will use Git (provided that everything is set up properly) to clone down the robot code into a folder (in the current directory) called r2015.
From Eclipse, you can then import the project as an "Existing Project" in the "Filesystem", and you're set to go.
To get your code into the master branch, first create a branch, commit to that branch, and create a Pull Request.
If this Pull Request is in response to an Issue, then reference that like "resolves #", so that GitHub will automagically close that Issue with the Pull Request, once it's merged.
You can, of course, commit directly to master, but generally it clutters things and makes things more confusing.
In general, try to keep your code as neat, expandable, and functional as possible. Don't focus on getting copious results, then stopping work; constantly iterate on your design.
Commit often, but not anally-so. Once you've done some unit of work, commit it. Make your message reflect what it's about. Then push.
If you can, make stuff dynamic. Handle all potential Exceptions, and make things both bulletproof and intelligent. This is what leads you to having a competitive program.
We use a combination of spaces and tabs; tabs are used for indentation, and spaces are used for alignment. This means that we have no desired tab width; you can use whatever you want, because everything will be aligned if it is styled properly.
Favor descriptive—and, if necessary, longer—variable, class, interface, enum, and method names.
Don't skimp out and use x or something nondescript like that, unless you're doing algebra or precompiling a graph with an x-axis or something like that.
The variable i is okay for quick iteration through an Array or something like that, but it's still generally better to use dynamic things like Iterators for manipulating those, anyway.
That said, feel free to break the coding style while you're getting something functional. It's important to work out functionality—then, you can go back and clean up your code before committing and pushing.
If you're on the same network as the robot—be that by being connected to its wireless network in the shop, or by being tethered via Ethernet—, and you can connect to it (You can see this by opening the driver station on your computer and seeing if you have "Communications"), you should be able to deploy to it. In Eclipse, just press Ctrl+F11, or click "Run > Run," and select the "WPIlib Robot Deployment" option. Eclipse will do stuff automagically for you.
If you're feeling advanced, you can do stuff in different editors by using Apache Ant to compile the robot program.
By default, this is how robot projects are, so it's not difficult.
Just install Ant.
Then, run ant compile to compile the robot program, and ant deploy to deploy it.