ShaurCapella
commented
1 year ago One of the things that we've done internally for COSMOS 3/4 design is have a custom config directory that we use to overwrite core configs w/ soft links before the sw startup for the non-web-based cosmos design. This means we can overload a target file (connect to different ports depending on the asset) or even load different dictionaries (target cmd tlm definitions).
Given the way plugins were explained to me in issue 539, i wonder if adding a feature button that allows one to rebuild and reload plugins at runtime based on a new config would solve the issue. For example in the default scope plugin folder you can have a directory like targets_modified but instead it's targets_redefined where say in the base plugin you have the target SPACECRAFT and if you include that same folder in targets_redefined you can actually rebuild the base plugin with all the same configs minus the SPACECRAFT folder, and same for the plugin.txt file, you can redefine ports or configs or targets as needed (this situation is for where you have a test asset but are adding and removing hardware ```
An example folder structure could be base plugin:
openc3-plugin-definition-blah-blah/
├─ targets/
│ ├─ SPACECRAFT/
│ │ ├─ cmd_tlm.txt
├─ plugin.txt
override in PLUGINS folder
PLUGINS/
├─ DEFAULT/
│ ├─ targets_redefined/
│ │ ├─ plugin.txt
│ │ ├─ SPACECRAFT/
│ │ │ ├─ cmd_tlm.txt
During a recent training we discussed supporting dynamically declared packets. Conops is that various commands are sent to the target embedded software and the contents of a packet changes. COSMOS only updates packet definitions based on plugins so this would require building and installing a new plugin. However you can break up plugins however you want so you can create two plugins: one for the statically defined packets and one that changes based on target SW updates.