Collection of Questions (collected during evaluation phase January-March 2008)

General

• Is is possible to debug FESA-classes with ddd? How??? -- SolveighMatthies - 22 Jan 2008
  • Is it possible to debug FESA-classes even with eclipse? How? -- SolveighMatthies - 13 July 2009
• On the front end computer gdb can be used directly: gdb executable. It is not comfortable but at least tells you, where the program crashed. Breaks due to priority signals (SIGPRIO) at the beginning can be ignored. -- HBr
• Is there a reference for typical error messages of the FESA-Shell? -- SolveighMatthies - 01 Feb 2008

Implementation matters

• Does documentation exist for implementing simple get- and set-functionality? -- SolveighMatthies - 01 Feb 2008
  • The Fesa "FesaMethodOverview.pdf" provides documentation there ... I think Tobias has uploaded it to the MainFesaWiki (a.schwinn)
• Does documentation exist for implementation in FESA-classes in general? -- SolveighMatthies - 01 Feb 2008
  • Same as above (a.schwinn)
    • Refined question: Does documentation exist for C++-implementation of FESA-classes? Where? -- SolveighMatthies - 13 July 2009
• Where does the pointer pWorkingDevice come from (see Tobias' SIS3320)? -- SolveighMatthies - 01 Feb 2008
  • pWorkingDevice is a member variable of the server action class and is set before the server action method execute is called. In Fesa 2.10 this variable is a parameter of the execute call. -- HBr
• How to send data to a property while calling it? -- SolveighMatthies - 13 Feb 2008
  • Within the Fesa shell you have the possibility to test your class. If you have specified dataFields, corresponding to your property, the shell allows any input value of that type of data, if you do a "set". (a.schwinn)
• How to implement a property with different data sets for reading and writing? Is it possible to have two properties
  with the same name, but different value-items? -- SolveighMatthies - 13 Feb 2008
  • Each property must have a unique name and can have at most one set and one get action. There are two possibilities if the data sets for reading and writing should be different:
    • Create two properties with different names and give one property only a get action and the other one only a set action. Advantage: if the properties are simple, the default get/set actions can be used.
    • If only selected items of the data set should be written, use your own set server action. On the server-action-ref set partial-setting allowed. This allows the GUI/middleware to send only partial data sets. In you set server action, check which items have been send using data.itemAvailable("..."). -- HBr
• What happens to the data if no min-/max-values are ever set? -- SolveighMatthies - 13 Feb 2008
  • I think the maximum range of the data type is used than. (a.schwinn)
• Using the FESA-log-class in the specificInit-Function leads to console output like

   INFO:
   INFO:
   DEBUG:
   INFO:

The text is not shown. Only the classical cout works. What's wrong? (Is it possible to view hexadecimal values via the log-output? How?) -- SolveighMatthies - 29 Feb 2008

• Is there an example on how to implement a 2-dimensional array in the C/C++-part? -- SolveighMatthies - 29 Feb 2008
  • I dont know if an example exists ... if you add a field in the design view, right-click on its scalar, and choose 2D Array ... priciplally, thats it. (a.schwinn)
• Is there function, that is called when a FESA-class is stopped (Useful for resetting values, states of LEDs etc.) ? Which function is called, when the process is terminated via the kill-command? -- SolveighMatthies - 29 Feb 2008

Testing on a FEC

• How to kill processes properly of on a FEC after having sent them in the background with ctrl+z?
  So far the only workaround is to restart the FEC to get rid of such zombies. -- SolveighMatthies - 31 Jan 2008
  • Obtain the process id (pid) using the command ps ax. Then kill the process using kill -9 pid -- HBr
    • That didn't work with FESA 2.9 (this version was used while FESA was evaluated in 2008)
• How to set the log level of the output??? -- SolveighMatthies - 04 Mar 2008

Working with the FESA-Shell

• Design: how to simulate GSI-Call-properties that don't have parameters? Currently the only way
  to implement them in FESA is to use a dummy-parameter. -- SolveighMatthies - 13 Feb 2008
  • sounds like a feature request for Fesa 3 =) (a.schwinn)
• Design: the GSI-Master-Property VERSION is an ASCII-String. Currently the only way to implement them
  is to use an array of chars. Is the a way to use strings without a defined length? -- SolveighMatthies - 13 Feb 2008
• Test-page: some messages are irritating on the TEST-page. E.g. the inquiry, wether a value
  is supposed to be set does not appear anymore after having restarted the process on the FEC. -- SolveighMatthies - 01 Feb 2008
• Design-Page: the button for finding all the nodes that refer to a certain element has
  different icons (e.g. it is a key or a 'triangle' on different occasions, but has the same tooltip). Is this a bug, feature or misunderstanding? -- SolveighMatthies - 12 Feb 2008