How to use the faracon tool from command line

Set up the command line environment in GNU/Linux

After having installed FARACON, the directory for the specific build (e.g. linux x86_64) may be copied in any place of the filesystem where it seems more appropriate to be. Let's suppose we use $HOME/faracon.

cp -a franca_ara_tools/products/org.genivi.faracon.cli.product/target/products/org.genivi.faracon.cli.product/linux/gtk/x86_64 $HOME/faracon

In order to ease the usage of FARACON, the $PATH environment variable can be set in order to launch the tool without having to specify the absolute path of the executable:

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/faracon

In order this change to be permanent, the previous line can be added to $HOME/.bashrc if you are using bash, $HOME/.shrc if you are using sh. For other shells, please check the shell's documentation.

Command Line options

faracon-linux-x86_64 --help will print the following output:

Command: Console Help
Command: Franca ARA Converter
usage: faracon [-a <arg>] [-c] [-ca] [-d <arg>] [-e] [-f <arg>] [-i <arg>] [-L
       <arg>] [-l <arg>]
 -a,--ara-to-franca <arg>       Arxml file that will be converted to .fidl or
                                directory what will be recursively scanned for
                                .arxml files and each one of them will be
                                converted to corresponding fidl ones.
 -c,--continue-on-errors        Do not stop the tool execution when an error
                                occurs.
 -ca,--check-arxml-files-only   Checks the provided ARXML files.
 -conf,--f2aconfig <arg>        Supply configuration file for command line
                                related to Franca-to-arxml generation.
 -d,--dest <arg>                Output directory for the generated files.
 -e,--warnings-as-errors        Treat warnings as errors.
 -f,--franca-to-ara <arg>       Franca file that will be converted to arxml or
                                directory what will be recursively scanned for
                                fidl files and each one of them will be
                                converted to corresponding arxml ones.
 -i,--include <arg>             Additions to classpath.
 -L,--license <arg>             The file path to the license text that will be
                                added to each generated file.
 -l,--log-level <arg>           The log level (quiet or verbose).

Command: Console Help
usage: faracon -h
 -h,--help   Print out options of the tool.

Command: Version Information
usage: faracon -v
 -v,--version   Show version number of the tool.

Note: All paths given as command line arguments should be either absolute paths or relative to the folder where the faracon executable resides.

Examples:

Convert all the fidl files in /path/to/fidls storing the output in /path/to/output, with a verbose logging level and continuing to translate the next fidls if an error happen:

faracon-linux-x86_64 -f /path/to/fidls/ -d /path/to/output/ -l verbose -c

Detailed Configuration File

The -conf option allows to specify a configuration file with detailed options for the Franca-to-arxml transformation. The configuration file has the well-known key=value format. The following example file shows the available options and their respective defaults.

# general
IsAdminDataLanguageGenerationNeeded=false
IsAnnotationGenerationNeeded=true

# service interfaces
IsOptionalFalseGenerationNeeded=false
IsAlwaysFireAndForgetGenerationNeeded=false

# application data types
IsADTsGenerationNeeded=false
IsStoringADTsLocallyNeeded=true
ADTPrefix=

# implementation data types
IDTPrefix=
IsReplacingIDTPrimitiveTypeDefsNeeded=false
IsStoringIDTsLocallyNeeded=true
IsAlwaysIDTArrayGenerationNeeded=false
CompuMethodPrefix=
IsStringAsArrayGenerationNeeded=false
UseSizeAndPayloadStructs=false
AvoidTypeReferences=false
SkipCompoundTypeReferences=true

# deployment
IsDeploymentGenerationNeeded=false
IsStoringDeploymentLocallyNeeded=true
IsSeparateDeploymentFileCreationNeeded=false