Plugins

Config & Origen.app

Every Origen application and plugin has an object that represents it, this is returned by Origen.app and is essentially an instance of the class defined in config/application.rb.

When calling Origen.app within plugin code some thought has to be given to which application you mean, do you mean the plugin itself or the top-level application that it is plugged into?

To deal with this ambiguity the following API exists which works the same as Origen.root:

Origen.app                # Returns the current top-level app instance
Origen.app!               # Returns the app instance associated with the code making the
                          # call, typically use this to get a plugin's app instance
Origen.app(:doc_helpers)  # Returns the app instance for the given plugin name

A common use case for examining the application instance is to see if a plugin is running standalone (in its own development workspace) or if it is running fully deployed as a plugin to a wider application.

The following code can be used in this case:

if Origen.app!.current?
  # The plugin is running standalone in its own workspace (I am the current application)
else
  # The plugin is running as a component in a parent application
end

A further question can arise if the plugin is found to be running as a component in a parent application: ‘am I the current plugin?’

To test for this:

if Origen.app!.current_plugin?
  # Do something special when I am the current plugin
else
  # Sigh, just another run-of-the-mill plugin
end

Some config options have the ability to be overridden by the current plugin, e.g. config.pattern_prefix will be set by the plugin that owns the pattern and not the top-level application.

See ATTRS_THAT_CURRENT_PLUGIN_CAN_OVERRIDE in the Configuration API for a complete list of the config options that fall into this category.

If the current plugin does not provide a value for a given config option then the value defined by the top-level application will be used instead.

Typically a rich plugin which provides patterns and similar IP to an application will contain logic like this in its config/application.rb:

# If this app is running standalone then it supports multiple devices and so in that
# case namespace the output by device type. However if running as a plugin then it
# will be in a single device app, in that case put everything in the 'atd' directory 
config.output_directory do
  if current? # If app is running standalone (i.e. not as a plugin)
    "#{Origen.root}/output/#{dut.class}"
  else
    "#{Origen.root}/output/atd"
  end
end