开云体育

All:

If you are an early adopter of the V6 ?BITX code, you may want to get the new download, too. Ashhar went through the trouble to upgrade the new version of the software to convert all of the old *.ino files to *.cpp files. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is! There are several benefits to the change.

First, while there has always been multiple source code files in his project, now only one file ends in *.ino. This means two things: 1) the project's ino file is the "primary file" in that it contains both setup() and loop(), the program's main entry point, and 2) the project's directory MUST be the same as the primary file name. That is, if the ino file is ubitx_v6.3_code.ino, the directory for the project must be ubitx_v6.3_code.

Second, the huge win is for those who like playing around with the code, since this new file-naming convention allows the IDE compiler to perform incremental compiles. For example, when I was compiling the 19-file, 11,000+ lines of code in the JackAl project, the first compile in the morning would take a little over a minute on a pretty fast computer (i.e., 3.8Mhz, 8-core with 32Gb of memory). The first compile clears the "dirty flag" in the IDE for each of the source files. Next I would start editing the nettlesome file that is giving me problems and re-compile the project. However, since I only worked on one source code file, only that file has its dirty flag set, so it is the only file that gets recompiled. The linker then merges this newly compiled file with the previously-compiled intermediate files to form the executable for upload to the Nano (or whatever chip). For me, this drops the recompile time from over a minute to less than 10 seconds. If I can save 50 seconds on each compile and a typical day produces 40 recompiles, that saves me over 30 minutes of thumb-twiddling each day! Do that for 19 months, and it's almost enough time for a two-week vacation!

This seemingly-small change by Ashhar simply adds yet another element to the ?BITX for which we need to thank him.

Jack, W8TEE