8.3 KiB
title, parent, nav_order
| title | parent | nav_order |
|---|---|---|
| Concepts | Advanced | 01 |
Concepts
{: .no_toc }
- Table of contents {:toc}
If you want to get deeper into Moose, you will encounter a few terms and concepts that we will explain here. You will need them for the later pages.
Git and GitHub
Moose has about 260.000 lines of code and the amount is increasing each week. To maintain such a big code base a vcs (version control system) is needed. Moose uses GitHub as developer platform to create, store, and manage the code. GitHub uses Git as version control system and provides additional functionality like access control, bug tracking, feature requests and much more.
As a Moose user you don't need to learn how to use Git. You can download the files on GitHub with a browser. But using Git will ease up the steps to keep the Moose version on your hard disk up to date.
You will need to interact with GitHub. At least to download the Moose files. For non developers the page can be confusing. Take your time and read this documentation. We are not able to explain every single detail on using GitHub and Git. Especially because it is changing really quick and this documentaion will not. So try to use the help system of GitHub or find some videos on YouTube. If you get stuck ask for help in the Moose Discord.
Moose uses more then one repository on GitHub which doesn't exactly make it any clearer. A list can be found on the reposities page.
Branches: master & develop
As already explained in the overview two branches are used:
As a starter it is okay to begin your journey with the master branch.
If you are interested in some newer classes you need to use the develop
branch. The later one is also very stable, but it's missing more detailed
documentation and example missions for some of the new OPS classes.
You can switch between these branches with a drop down in the upper left corner of th GitHub repository page. The list of branches is long. So it is a best practise to save a bookmark in your browser with the links above. Both branches are available on most of the different repositories. But because of a limitation of GitHub pages, we had to split the documentation in two different repositories:
- Documentation of
masterbranch: MOOSE_DOCS - Documentation of
developbranch: MOOSE_DOCS_DEVELOP
Build result vs. source files
Moose consists of more than 140 individual files with the file extension .lua.
They are places in a directory tree, which makes it more organized and its
semantic is pre-defined for IntelliSense to work.
On every change which is pushed to GitHub a build job will combine all of
these files to a single file called Moose.lua. In a second step all
comments will be removed to decrease the file size and the result will be saved
as Moose_.lua. These both files are created for users of Moose to include in
your missions.
The individual .lua files are used by the Mosse developers and power users.
It is complicated to use them, but in combination with an IDE and a debugger it
is very usefull to analyse even complex problems or write new additions to the
Moose framework.
Static loading
If you add a script file with a DO SCRIPT FILE trigger, like we described in
Create your own Hello world, the script file will be copied into the mission
file. This mission file (file extension .MIZ) is only a compressed ZIP archive
with another file ending.
If you change the script file after adding it to the mission, the changes are not available on mission start. You have to re-add the script after each change. This can be very annoying and often leads to forgetting to add the change again. Then you wonder why the script does not deliver the desired result.
But when the mission is finished you can upload it to your dedicated DCS server
or give it to a friend and it should run without problems. This way of embedding
the scripts do we call static loading and the resulting mission is very
portable.
Dynamic loading of mission scripts
The other way of loading scripts is by using DO SCRIPT. This time the mission
editor don't show a file browse button. Instead you see a (very small) text
field to enter the code directly into it. It is only usefull for very small
script snippets. But we can use it to load a file from your hard drive like
this:
dofile('C:/MyScripts/hello-world.lua')
dofile('C:\\MyScripts\\hello-world.lua')
dofile([[C:\MyScripts\hello-world.lua]])
So all lines above do the same. In Lua you need to specify the path with slashes, escape backslashes or use double square brackets around the string. But double square brackets is usefull, because you can copy paste the path without any modification.
If you upload a mission with this code, you need to create the folder
C:\MyScripts\ on the server file system and upload the newest version of
hello-world.lua, too. The same applies if you give the mission to a friend.
This makes the mission less portable, but on the other hand the mission uses the
file on the hard disk without the need to add it to the mission again.
All you need to do is save the file and restart the mission.
The following can be used to increase portability:
dofile(lfs.writedir() .. '/Missions/hello-world.lua')
The function lfs.writedir() will return your Saved Games folder.
So you place the scripts in the subfolder Missions. This way the folder
structure is already available on all target systems. But you need to ensure
mission and script are both in sync to avoid problems. If you changed both and
upload only one of them to your server, you may get trouble.
There is another method you may find usefull to dynamically load scripts:
assert(loadfile('C:/MyScripts/hello-world.lua'))()
assert(loadfile('C:\\MyScripts\\hello-world.lua'))()
assert(loadfile([[C:\MyScripts\hello-world.lua]]))()
It is a little bit harder to read and write because of all these different
brackets. Especially the one on line 3. But it is a little safer then dofile.
Because of readability I prefer to use dofile.
Dynamic loading of Moose
Of course you can use the same method to load Moose. This way you can place one
Moose file in your Saved Games folder, which is used by multiple missions.
If you want to update Moose you just need to replace the file and all missions
will use the new version. But I prefer to add Moose by a DO SCRIPT FILE
trigger so I can add and test the new version for each mission step by step.
But we added two different ways to load the Moose source files automatically. This is usefull for Moose developers and it is a requirement to use a debugger. This will be explained later in the Debugger Guide.
Automatic dynamic loading
-- Use script file from hard disk instead of the one included in the .miz file
if lfs and io then
MissionScript = lfs.writedir() .. '/Missions/hello-world-autodyn.lua'
-- Check if the running skript is from temp directory to avoid an endless loop
if string.find( debug.getinfo(1).source, lfs.tempdir() ) then
local f=io.open(MissionScript,"r")
if f~=nil then
io.close(f)
env.info( '*** LOAD MOOSE MISSION SCRIPT FROM HARD DISK *** ' )
dofile(MissionScript)
do return end
end
end
else
env.error( '*** LOAD MOOSE MISSION SCRIPT FROM HARD DISK FAILED (Desanitize lfs and io)*** ' )
end
--
-- Simple example mission to show the very basics of MOOSE
--
MESSAGE:New( "Hello World! This messages is printed by MOOSE!", 35, "INFO" ):ToAll():ToLog()