flashcontainer 0.0.3

A tooling for flashable parameter data container generation

ParGen - A tool for Flashable Parameter Container Creation

ParGen is an embedded development tool for generation of parameters values that can be stored in flash memory and maintained independent from the application. It allows to alter/update parameter values without recompilations.

Concept and Planned Features

• Read input from a schema validated XML file
• Generate C-Source stubs for embedding into the application source amd testing environments
• Generate Intel Hex files for flashing with a programmer
• Generate GNU linker include file for mapping the parameter to absolute addresses
• Generate A2L fragments for accessing the parameters from AUTOSAR test environments

Installing Python Dependencies

An example configuration is in the 'example' folder. To run it make sure to have all dependencies from requirements.txt installed. Run the following inside the checked out sandbox folder:

MacOS/Linux

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

Windows

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate.bat (or Activate.ps1 for powershell)

Create a Development Editable Install

An editable install is needed for running the unittests and development of the package itself. It installs the package in the local virtual environment, but uses the python files form the src folder.

python3 -m pip install -e .

Build a Installation Package

An installable wheel file can be created using the build package and the following commands:

python3 -m pip install --upgrade build
python3 -m build

The wheel file will be generated in the dist folder:

ls dist
flashcontainer-0.0.1-py3-none-any.whl   flashcontainer-0.0.1.tar.gz

The parameter generator tool can then by called on cmdline using

$ pargen -h
usage: pargen [-h] [--version] [--ihex IHEX] [--csrc CSRC] [--gld GLD] file

A tool for generating flashable parameter container.

positional arguments:
    file         XML parameter definition file

options:
    -h, --help   show this help message and exit
    --version    show program's version number and exit
    --ihex IHEX  Generate intelhex file with given name.
    --csrc CSRC  Generate c/c++ header and source file using given basename.
     --gld GLD    Generate GNU linker include file for parameter symbol generation.    

Running the Example

Go to the folder example and run the "run.bat" or "run.sh" script. It should create the following output:

pargen 0.0.1 : A tool for generating flashable parameter container.
copyright (c) 2022 [e-mail]

Generating intelhex file example.hex
Generating C-files param.[ch]
Generating GNU Linker script example.ld
Done.

The tools parses the example.xml parameter definition file and converts it into

• Intel hex files for flashing
• C/H files for accessing the parameter in applications (H-File) and unittests (C-File)
• GNU Linker script for generating parameter symbols at the flash adresses

Issues, Ideas And Bugs

If you have further ideas or you found some bugs, great! Create an issue or if you are able and willing to fix it by yourself, clone the repository and create a pull request.

License

The whole source code is published under the BSD 3-Clause License. Consider also the different licenses of used third party libraries too!

Contribution

We welcome contribution, but unless you explicitly state otherwise: Any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, shall be licensed as above, without anyadditional terms or conditions.