[Paparazzi-devel] PPRZLINK

[Gautier Hattenberger]

Dear all,

We are happy to introduce a new design for the communication system of 
Paparazzi. It is called PPRZLINK and it is obviously inspired by mavlink 
for some aspects.

So what have changed? For now, nothing concerning the messages and the 
protocol (but we still plan to do that someday...). The changes are 
related to the fact that the messages definition, the code generator and 
the utility libraries (ocaml, python) have been split from the code base 
and are hosted in a dedicated github repository 
https://github.com/paparazzi/pprzlink.

The main benefit is that it should be easier now to integrate the 
Paparazzi message system to other projects. Another important change is 
that the code generator is now in Python, mostly based on mavlink 
generator (so no more excuses about not knowing Ocaml).

If you pull the latest master code, you should (TM) be able to use this 
new feature straight after rebuilding the project. Here is a list of a 
few changes that might impact your work if you have some personal 
developments involving messages:
- the file conf/messages.xml has been removed and the messages 
definition provided by pprzlink is used by default
- if this file still exists (because you have personal messages not 
pushed upstream), it will be used instead of the default one
- generated C files are in var/include/pprzlink and var/share/pprzlink 
folders, messages.xml and units.xml files are also copied in var folder 
for use in ground segment programs
- if you want to make a pull request involving changes in message 
definition, you should also make a pull request in pprzlink for that 
(but as said before, you can use a custom conf/messages.xml file for 
development purpose)

If you have any troubles regarding this rather important change, don't 
hesitate to let us know. We hope this will help you to develop new 
things communicating with Paparazzi.

Happy flights!


Gautier for the Paparazzi Dev Team