Discuss the possibility to automatic build the 2FOC firmware with GitHub Action

[GiulioRomualdi]

This issue follows #159 (comment).

Disclaimer: What I'm presenting here is related to the 2FOC firmware, I don't know if it can be extended to the firmware of other boards

Even if the code of icub-firmware is updated, the new version firmware in icub-firmware-build has to be manually pushed, this manual operation can be boring and sometimes the author of the PR may forget to do this. As a consequence, it may happen that a flashed firmware is not related to any commit in icub-firmware-build. As a consequence, it might be complex to guarantee the reproducibility of the experiments/demos (please check robotology/community#450)

In this issue, I would like to discuss the possibility to automatize the process of deploying the 2FOC firmware.

Thanks to #163 the firmware compiles on Linux. Thus we may think to use a GitHub action to automatically compile the firmware and push it on icub-firmware-build
For instance, this GitHub action can be used.

This approach was already employed in icub-models-generator and icub-models. Indeed the devel branch of icub-models is populated by a GitHub Action running on icub-models-generator.

I believe that this action will help us (@robotology/iit-dynamic-interaction-control) to better guarantee the repeatability of the software we develop.

cc @DanielePucci @traversaro @isorrentino @marcoaccame @ale-git

[pattacini]

Hi @GiulioRomualdi

Thanks for opening this discussion 👍🏻

Your proposal is very appealing, indeed, and we have it already as an important point on our roadmap 💹
The roadmap foresees a change of our whole toolchain ⚙ to head toward more open and more flexible methods that will in turn integrate tightly with the GitHub actions stack.

@marcoaccame is already working out alternative toolchains with these perks in mind, although this change won't take place soon.

Regarding the 2FOC, I think it's a doable task. We'd only need to plan for it.

[traversaro]

Note that two important aspects that are needed to enable GitHub Actions enabled build are:

• Support headless (i.e. from command line) installation of the build
• Support headless (i.e. from command line) compilation of the firmware (possibly related: https://microchipdeveloper.com/mplabx:work-outside-build-project)

If the first point is not support, the use of custom GitHub Runners could permit to bypass it.

[pattacini]

Putting @Nicogene in the loop as he was interested in this as well.

[GiulioRomualdi]

Hi @traversaro it's possible to compile the firmware of the 2foc from the terminal (Linux)
I tried on my laptop
Please check here: https://github.com/velocitek/ghactions-mplabx/blob/c59aac181bc581925b0d34ed218fd89527edfa6f/build.sh#L7-L8

[traversaro]

Hi @traversaro it's possible to compile the firmware of the 2foc from the terminal (Linux)
I tried on my laptop
Please check here: https://github.com/velocitek/ghactions-mplabx/blob/c59aac181bc581925b0d34ed218fd89527edfa6f/build.sh#L7-L8

And from the same repo also the first condition seems to be satisfied: https://github.com/velocitek/ghactions-mplabx/blob/c59aac181bc581925b0d34ed218fd89527edfa6f/Dockerfile#L3 .