Assemble blocks into an app

A collection of block instances that can be loaded to a PandABlocks device is called an app. This page explains how to create and build a new app.

The app ini file¶

An ini file specifies the blocks that make up an app. It lives in the apps/ directory with the extension .app.ini. It contains a top-level [.] section followed by one section for every block in the app.

The [.] section¶

The first section holds app-wide information:

[.]
description: Short description of what this app will do
target: device_type

description

A human-readable description of what the app contains and why it should be used.

target

Must match a directory name under targets/ that wraps the blocks in a top-level entity loadable on the given PandABlocks device.

[BLOCK] sections¶

All other sections specify block instance information:

[MYBLOCK]
number: 4
module: mymodule
ini: myblock.block.ini

The section name becomes the block name in the resulting app. Use upper-case letters and underscores only — no numbers.

number

Number of block instances to include. Defaults to 1 if omitted.

module

Directory under modules/ containing the block ini file. Defaults to the lowercase section name if omitted.

ini

Block ini filename relative to the module directory. Defaults to the lowercase section name + .block.ini if omitted.

Building the app¶

Run:

make

This builds the app named by APP_NAME in the top-level CONFIG file and produces an .ipk package (panda-fpga-<app>_<version>_all.ipk) that can be deployed to a PandABlocks device:

APP_NAME = pandabox-no-fmc

To build every app in apps/, run make all-ipks instead. See Build an FPGA image for the full build setup.

Querying the app at runtime¶

Query the loaded app name via the TCP server:

< *METADATA.APPNAME?
> OK =pandabox-fmc-24vio

The app name is kebab-case, following the .ipk name — for example panda-fpga-pandabox-fmc-acq430_4.2b1.ipk reports pandabox-fmc-acq430.