Seth on Simulink

November 26th, 2008

Today’s post is courtesy of my first guest blogger Tom Erkkinen, my colleague from the MathWorks office in Novi, Michigan!

Ever try to compile code generated by Real-Time Workshop on a computer without MATLAB installed and have it build the first time? If yes, great for you!

Now for the rest of us mere mortals, I’d like to introduce packNGo, a handy utility for porting generated code to new platforms.

Introduction

packNGo collects the generated code, locates all files needed to build the code, and packs it into a single zip file. It even includes those hard to find dependency files deep within your MATLAB installation directory. You can then go to a different computer, unzip, and build. Presto! No more link errors from missing headers.

Usage

packNGo is based on the BuildInfo API, which offers a programmatic way to interrogate and control the code generation, compilation, and build processes. You invoke packNGo by establishing a post processing code generation step, or hook point, using the set_param command. Once established, a zip file is generated during the code generation process in a flat or hierarchical structure.

I prefer the hierarchy because it clearly separates the code generated in my build directory (sDirFiles.zip) from the files in my MATLAB installation directory (mlrFiles.zip).

Example

The following commands generate and package code for a demo provided with Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder, rtwdemo_cppencap. Note that this demo highlights C++ class generation in Release R2008b.

>> rtwdemo_cppencap;
>> set_param(bdroot,'PostCodeGenCommand',...
     'packNGo(buildInfo, {''packType'' ''hierarchical''})');
>> rtwbuild(bdroot);

The zip file produced is shown below.

Now you can go to your Hardware-in-the-Loop lab, system simulator, or real-time prototyping platform and build.

Caveats

packNGo operates on source files, such as *.c, *.cpp, *.h files but not other files such as compiler and link directives, or makefiles. Unnecessary files may be included but each release has fewer and fewer of these. Source code for S-functions is included in the zip package.

I hope you enjoyed my quick introduction to this handy but not well known feature.   Please read our documentation or leave a comment for more about packNGo.

02:30 UTC | Posted in Code Generation, Guest Blogger, Real-Time Workshop | Permalink |

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3 Responses to “Where’s the Code?”

1. Chitlesh GOORAH replied on November 26th, 2008 at 08:15 UTC :
   

   Hello Seth, Thanks for the tip. I am curious whether with the packNGo function the zip file is platform independent. In other words will the files under the zip file be compiled under Linux or Mac ?

   As I can see the mlrFiles.zip contains matlab dependency files. Could you please give us some details about the licensing conflicts that a company will have if the rtwdemo_cppencap.zip file is to be sold to another company?

2. tom erkkinen replied on November 26th, 2008 at 13:36 UTC :
   

   The zip file is just a standard zip, so you can unpack it from MATLAB or any zip utility on any platform.

3. Guy Rouleau replied on November 26th, 2008 at 14:46 UTC :
   

   @ Chitlesh, The files are not all platform independent. The C-code is, but the auto-generated makefile is based on the TMF-file selected during the build process. If you want to generate code on a windows platform and use it on a UNIX platform, you have to modify the “grt_unix.tmf” template make file for your machine. Guidelines to compile generated code on a computer without MATLAB for releases before the existence of “packNGo” can be found at this address:

   http://www.mathworks.com/support/solutions/data/1-19EH0.html

   The modifications to the template makefile described in this page are valid for the current release.

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