Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Updating to 3.7/next (currently)

[Carles Fernandez]

Thanks, Tom and Johnathan for the feedback. We understand that you are doing your best effort to bring the new release ASAP, and we appreciate this new organization of the source code; it makes our code clearer and avoids unnecessary dependencies. The transition using the master/next branches is quite clean and easy to catch on to, and we can live with the occasional breaks (at least for a few weeks :-)) since it's all for a better endeavor.

Best regards,

Carles

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:20 PM, Johnathan Corgan <address@hidden> wrote:

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:51 AM, Carles Fernandez
<address@hidden> wrote:

> Thanks Tom for keeping us updated about the required changes for C++
> applications that builds against GNU Radio. We are working to adapt our code
> from 3.6 to 3.7 API, and these advices save us a nice amount of time. Let me
> say that the process is running quite smoothly and we are not having big
> issues in the porting.

Happy to hear that there are no problems.

> Is there a tentative date for releasing 3.7? We are now working with the
> next branch for adapting our code, but at this moment we should decide if we
> break compatibility with the master branch (3.6 API) in order to go on with
> the required modifications (and asking our users to build the next branch
> instead of the master, at least until the release of GNU Radio 3.7), or just
> wait for those forthcoming changes.

Our plan is to have the final 3.7 API on the next branch in place very
quickly, but we haven't set a firm date.  There is one major API
change left (converting the runtime code to the virtual private
implementation pattern) to do before then.  This will affect users'
C++ code in several ways.

First, includes will change in form from these examples:

#include <gr_sync_block.h>
#include <gr_io_signature.h>
#include <audio/source.h>
#include <filter/pfb_decimator_ccf.h>

...to:

#include <gnuradio/sync_block.h>
#include <gnuradio/io_signature.h>
#include <gnuradio/audio/source.h>
#include <gnuradio/filter/pfb_decimator_ccf.h>

Secondly, the C++ classes in the GNU Radio runtime will be accessed
through the 'gr' namespace, so class declarations that look like:

class my_foo_block : public gr_sync_block {...};
class my_top_block : public gr_top_block {...};

...will become:

class my_foo_block : public gr::sync_block {...};
class my_top_block : public gr::top_block {...};

Finally, creating instances of classes in the runtime will use the
static class make() function, instead of calling the separate
gr_make_* calls.  Thus:

gr_make_io_signature(1, 1, sizeof(gr_complex))

...becomes:

gr::io_signature::make(1, 1, sizeof(gr::complex))

Python and GRC code won't be affected by this change.

It's been a very long time in coming, but once we get this final
change in place, the remaining work for 3.7 is bug fixing, doc
cleanup, and having release candidate testing until we're convinced
that it is stable enough to become the new master.  We'll be
documenting the process of porting existing code from 3.6 to 3.7 on
the wiki (Tom has already started this).  Fortunately, it's almost all
mechanical in nature like the above, and can largely be automated with
tools like sed.

The 3.6 -> 3.7 change has been a grand internal refactoring while most
major new features have happened in parallel (without breaking user
code) on the 3.6 release series.  It's been increasingly difficult to
maintain these consistent with each other, so Tom and I have a strong
motivation to get this done as quickly as possible.

--
Johnathan Corgan
Corgan Labs - SDR Training and Development Services
http://corganlabs.com