openTCS: Change Log

Enable vehicle drivers to inspect the whole transport order before accepting it, not just the respective sequence of destination operations.

Reflect the currently claimed and allocated resources in a vehicle’s state.

Show the currently claimed and allocated resources for a selected vehicle in the properties panel in the Operations Desk application.

Show all properties of a path’s peripheral operations in a table instead of listing only the location and operation names.

Update web API specification and implementation to version 1.1.0:

Skip the user confirmation for exiting the Kernel Control Center application.

In the File menu, improve the names of the entries for uploading a model to the kernel and downloading it from the kernel.

Update Jackson to 2.13.0.

Update Spark to 2.9.3.

Properly specify and implement claim semantics in the Scheduler interface, allowing custom scheduling strategies to take vehicles' planned future resource allocations into account.

Introduce VehicleCommAdapter.canAcceptNextCommand(), which can be used to (statically or dynamically) influence the amount of movement commands a comm adapter receives from its VehicleController.

Execute virtual vehicle simulation using the kernel executor to avoid potential deadlocks.

Restore single-step mode for virtual vehicles.

Fix immediate withdrawal of transport orders.

When the Kernel application is started, initialize its components (e.g. dispatcher, router, scheduler) using the kernel executor, especially to avoid scheduling issues with plant models that are loaded with application start up.

Fix the order sequence details panel which would not load due to some wrong paths to a resource bundle.

Fix an issue where the Operations Desk was not in sync with the Kernel when using very large models.

Fix an issue where cutting and pasting elements in the Model Editor would create multiple elements with the same name.

Switch to publishing artifacts via the Maven Central artifact repository. (Previously, artifacts used to be published to JCenter, an artifact repository that has been discontinued.)

Update the license information: All components, including the Model Editor and Operations Desk applications, are now licensed under the terms of the MIT license.

When a vehicle is waiting for resources to be allocated (e.g. because resources are occupied/blocked by another vehicle), allow it to be rerouted from its current position. (Previously, rerouting was done from the point for which the vehicle was waiting, which could lead to unnecessary waiting times.)

When a vehicle is rerouted while it is waiting for peripheral interactions to be finished, properly reroute the vehicle from the peripheral’s position.

When loading plant models with the Model Editor and Operations Desk applications, show more fine-grained steps in the corresponding progress bars.

In the Operations Desk, sort transport orders and peripheral jobs in the respective tables in descending order according to their creation time.

Reduce the time it takes the Operations Desk to process vehicle updates.

Update Gradle wrapper to 6.8.3.

Update JUnit 4 to 4.13.2.

Update JUnit 5 to 5.7.2.

Update Hamcrest to 2.2.

For plant model elements' tooltip texts in the Operations Desk, sort properties lexicographically and colorize vehicles' states.

Made names generated for transport orders to be (really) lexicographically sortable.

Add a QueryService to the kernel that can be used to execute generic/custom queries via registered QueryResponder instances.

Add support for creating plant models with multiple layers.

Add experimental support for peripheral devices, with device interactions triggered by vehicles travelling along paths. (Note that this is not really documented, yet, and that experimental means that developers using any parts of it are on their own, for now.)

Add a new version of the XML Schema definition for the openTCS plant model.

Allow the scheduler to be triggered explicitly via Scheduler.reschedule().

Show properties in model elements' tooltips.

Split the Plant Overview application in two separate applications: The Model Editor provides model creation and manipulation functionality, while the Operations Desk is used for interacting with a plant while it is in operation.

Split the Operations Desk’s pause button into a pause and a resume button.

Remove support for groups. (Layers can now be used to group plant model components.)

Allow project-specific edge evaluators and routing group mappings to be used.

Default Scheduler: Properly handle requests for same-direction blocks for some edge cases.

Default Scheduler: Really free all resources when taking a vehicle out of the driving course.

Plant Overview: Improve performance for vehicle state updates.

As with paths, locations can now be locked via the Plant Overview application to prevent them from being used by vehicles.

Remove the TCP host interface kernel extension.

Remove the kernel application’s GUI.

Provide the route to be travelled to vehicle drivers with every movement order, for cases in which vehicles require some information about it.

Allow supplementary configuration sources to be registered via service loader.

Allow a configuration reload interval to be set via a system property.

Improve performance of loading a plant model file into the kernel.

Rename transport order category to transport order type.

Update Spark to 2.9.1.

In the Plant Overview application’s "Continuous load" plugin panel, it is now possible to properly remove/delete entries in the drive order and property tables.

Changing the loopback driver’s state through its panel in the Kernel Control Center application now works in all cases.

When using the Kernel’s RMI interface with SSL enabled, avoid side effects on other components using SSL.

Fix creating links between points and locations in the Plant Overview application.

Optionally have names for transport orders and order sequences generated by the kernel. Use ULIDs for these generated names by default, to have lexicographically sortable names.

Add a publishEvent() method to the KernelServicePortal interface that RMI-Clients can use to publish events on the Kernel application’s event bus.

Enable the Kernel Control Center application to set positions for all simulating vehicle drivers, not only the loopback driver.

Paths that have the same start and end components are now displayed properly in the Plant Overview.

In the Plant Overview’s continuous load panel, transport order definitions can now be saved to and restored from XML files again. (Note that in the course of fixing this issue, the XML files' structure was improved. Since the feature had been broken for a while and is not part of a public API, backwards compatibility was not maintained for this. As a result, transport order definition files from old versions of openTCS cannot be restored.)

Make using the "try it out" buttons in the OpenAPI documentation possible by setting CORS headers in the web API’s responses.

Add history entries for transport orders being deferred or resumed as well as assigned to or reserved for vehicles in the dispatching process. This makes it easier to find out e.g. why a transport order wasn’t assigned to a vehicle, yet. It also implicitly deprecates transport orders' rejection entries, as history entries provide the same functionality, but for more use cases.

Expect applications' locales to be set via BCP 47 language tags, making the configuration more flexible and independent from the source code.

Extend the default router to be able to extract explicitly given routing costs from path properties, too.

In case no load or unload operation is defined for a virtual vehicle, use a default value to avoid exceptions.

Do not (wrongly) set a vehicle’s processing state to IDLE whenever its integration level is set to TO_BE_UTILIZED.

Avoid potential deadlocks related to using the Plant Overview’s resource allocation panel.

Disable the Kernel application’s integrated control center GUI by default. It can still be re-enabled via the Kernel configuration, but it has been deprecated for several openTCS releases now and will be removed with the openTCS 5.

Move all language files for the applications' internationalization to a common hierarchy, remove unused/left-over entries and apply a proper naming pattern to the remaining ones to improve maintainability. (The language files for the Kernel application’s integrated control center GUI are excluded from this, as that GUI will be removed with openTCS 5.)

Remove support for the Plant Overview application’s old model file format (file name extension .opentcs). The old format has been deprecated since openTCS 4.8 in favour of a unified file format (file name extension .xml) shared by Kernel and Plant Overview. Users who still have model files in the old format may want to save them in the current format before updating.

Remove the menu item to trigger the kernel’s dispatching process from the Plant Overview’s main menu. The dispatcher is triggered automatically (and, for special cases in integration projects, periodically), so manual triggering does not need to be involved.

With the defaultdispatcher.reparkVehiclesToHigherPriorityPositions configuration enabled: Prevent a vehicle from being re-parked to positions that have the same priority as the vehicle’s current parking position.

Fix a bug where charging vehicles don’t execute transport orders after they have reached the "sufficiently recharged" state.

The Kernel application does no longer persist Color and ViewBookmark elements of the visual layout. (For some time now, these elements could no longer be created with the PlantOverview application and were ignored when a model was loaded, anyway.)

Fix a bug with the loopback communication adapter that prevents resources from being properly released when the "loopback:initialPosition" property is set on vehicles.

Introduce an event history for transport orders that can be filled with arbitrary event data.

Introduce "*" as a wildcard in a vehicle’s processable categories to allow processing of transport orders in any category.

The Plant Overview’s vehicle panel now also shows the current destination of each vehicle.

With the defaultdispatcher.rerouteTrigger configuration entry set to DRIVE_ORDER_FINISHED, ensure that the rerouting is only applied to the vehicle that has actually finished a drive order.

For vehicles selected in the Plant Overview, re-allow changing their integration levels via the context menu to either "to be utilized" or "to be respected" if any of them is currently processing a transport order, too.

Remove the included integration project generator and document usage of the example integration project, instead.

Update the web API specification to OpenAPI 3.

Update Gradle to 4.10.3.

Update Checkstyle to 8.16.

Update JUnit to 5.3.2.

Update Guice to 4.2.2.

Introduce optional priorities for parking positions. With these, vehicles are parked at the one with the highest priority. Optionally, vehicles already parking may be reparked to unoccupied positions with higher priorities.

Provide additional energy levels for vehicles to influence when recharging may be stopped.

Make the Plant Overview’s naming schemes for plant model elements configurable.

In the Plant Overview, allow multiple vehicles to be selected for changing the integration level or withdrawing transport orders.

Prevent a movement order from being sent to a vehicle a second time after the vehicle got rerouted while waiting for resource allocation.

Introduce a type property for blocks. A block’s type now determines the rules for entering it:

Properly set a point’s layout coordinates when it is placed exactly on an axis in the Plant Overview.

Properly select the correct/clicked-on tree entry in the Plant Overview’s blocks tree view when the same element is a member of more than one block.

Prevent the Kernel application from freezing when loading some larger plant models.

Require the user to confirm immediate withdrawals of transport orders in the plant overview, as they have some implications that may lead to collisions or deadlocks in certain situations.

Improve input validation of unit-based properties for plant model elements.

Remove the Kernel Control Center’s function to reset the position of a vehicle. Users should now set the vehicle’s integration level to TO_BE_IGNORED, instead.

Allow the loopback driver to be disabled completely.

Minor improvements to the configuration interface API.

Mark all AdapterCommand implementations in the base API as deprecated. These commands' functionality is specific to the respective communication adapter and should be implemented and used there.

Introduce an explicit integration level property for vehicles that expresses to what degree a vehicle should be integrated into the system. (Setting the integration level to TO_BE_UTILIZED replaces the manual dispatching that was previously used to integrate a vehicle.)

Allow recomputing of a vehicle’s route after finishing a drive order or on topology changes.

Allow vehicle themes to define not only the graphics used, but also the content and style of vehicle labels in the Plant Overview.

Enable the web API to optionally use HTTPS.

Allow an optional set of properties for meta information to be stored in a model, and use it to store the model file’s last-modified time stamp in it.

Prevent moving of model elements in the Plant Overview when in mode OPERATING.

Prevent creation of groups in the Plant Overview when in mode OPERATING.

Properly handle renaming of paths and path names that do not follow the default naming pattern in the Plant Overview.

Multiple minor fixes for the integration project generator.

When using the Plant Overview or Kernel Control Center with SSL-encrypted RMI, verification of the server certificate is now mandatory.

Adjust the default docking frames layout in the Plant Overview for mode OPERATING a bit to make better use of wide-screen displays.

Include web API documentation generated by Swagger in the distribution.

Include the buildSrc/ directory in the source distribution.

Properly display vehicle routes after adding driving course views in the Plant Overview.

Properly disconnect the plant overview from the kernel when switching to modelling mode.

Fix jumping mouse cursor when dragging/moving model elements in the Plant Overview in some cases.

Allow the kernel to work headless, i.e. without a GUI. Introduce a separate Kernel Control Center application that provides the same functionality and can be attached to the kernel as a client.

Provide a single-threaded executor for sequential processing of tasks in the kernel, which helps avoiding locking and visibility issues. Use this executor for most tasks, especially the ones manipulating kernel state, that were previously executed concurrently.

Introduce a web API (HTTP + JSON), intended to replace the proprietary TCP/IP host interface, which is now deprecated.

Introduce an API for pluggable model import and export implementations in the Plant Overview.

Split the Kernel interface into aspect-specific service interfaces.

Provide a (more) simple event API, including an event bus implementation as a replacement for the previously used MBassador and event hub.

Overhaul the default dispatcher implementation to improve maintainability and extensibility.

Allow suggestions for property values in the Plant Overview to depend on the key.

Improve API and deprecate classes and methods in lots of places.

Improve default formatting of log output for better readability.

Fix erroneous behaviour for renaming of points when points are block members in the plant model.

Fix processing of XML messages received via the TCP-based host interface.

Properly store links between locations and points in the unified XML file format when the link was drawn from the location instead of from the point.

Ensure that marshalling and unmarshalling of XML data always uses UTF-8. This fixes problems with plant models containing special characters (like German umlauts) e.g. in element names.

Properly copy model coordinates to layout coordinates in the plant overview without invalidating the model.

Adjust erroneous behaviour in the load generator plugin panel and properly update its GUI elements depending on its state.

Add a category property to transport orders and order sequences and a set of processable categories to vehicles, allowing a finer-grained selection of processable orders.

Prepare proper encryption for RMI connections.

Use the unified (i.e. the kernel’s) XML file format to load and save plant models in the plant overview by default. (The plant overview’s previous default file format is still supported for both loading and saving. Support for the old format will eventually be removed in a future version, though, so users are advised to switch to the new format.)

Remove some unmaintained features from the loopback adapter and its GUI.

Ensure that scheduler modules are properly terminated.

Allow the colors used for vehicles' routes be defined in the plant model.

Have the default dispatcher periodically check for idle vehicles that could be dispatched. This picks up vehicles that have not been in a dispatchable state when dispatching them was previously tried.

Don’t mark a drive order as finished if the transport order it belongs to was withdrawn.

Properly update the vehicles' states in the kernel control center’s vehicle list.

When creating locations, properly attach links to the respective points, too.

When renaming a point in the plant overview, properly update blocks containing paths starting or ending at this point.

Avoid NPE when the transport order referenced in a Vehicle instance does not exist in the kernel any more.

Allow the kernel’s RMI port to be set via configuration.

Allow preferred parking positions and recharge locations to be set as properties on Vehicle instances.

In XML status channel messages, add a reference to a vehicle’s transport order, and vice versa.

Allow the kernel’s order cleanup task to be adjusted via predicates that approve cleanup of transport orders and order sequences.

Deprecate VehicleCommAdapter.State. It’s not really used anywhere, and the enum elements are fuzzy/incomplete, anyway.

Made documentation of configuration entries (for users) easy via annotations.

Switched configuration files from XML to properties.

Switched to read-only configuration.

Moved vehicle communication adapter base classes to org.opentcs.drivers.vehicle and named them more appropriately.

Removed TCP/IP communication implementation from org.opentcs.util.communication.tcp and a few more utility classes. Maintaining these is out of the openTCS project’s scope.

Communication adapters may now participate with dependency injection.

Default kernel strategies may now easily be overridden.

Method Set<String> getModelNames() was changed to String getModelName(), as from now on there exists only one model at a time.

Method loadModel(String modelName) no longer requires/accepts a parameter.

Method saveModel(String modelName, boolean overwrite) no longer accepts the boolean parameter and overwrites the model automatically.

Method removeModel(String rmName) no longer requires/accepts a parameter.

Methods createLayout(byte[] layoutData) and setLayoutData(TCSObjectReference<Layout> ref, byte[] newData) have been removed along with class Layout.