Is there documentation of any kind about the various pieces of the VTS project/solution? I have finally gotten things to build using VS 2015 and the result creates a runnable application, so far. (I haven't yet tried to run it thru its paces to see if it runs like the executable that I downloaded and have been using.) I had to edit the PTP project options and a couple of source files to get it to even compile. It wasn't difficult but I was doing things essentially blind. So, having gotten to here without a heavy amount of effort, I was wondering before I dove in headfirst, if there was any documentation about what the structure of the code and how everything is supposed to go together? I looked in the DOCs directory but I don't see what I am looking for.
Last edit: Robert Cook 2020-11-23
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The only documentation is what's in the "Docs" directory, and that is almost entirely user-level stuff. The badly-named "QuickStart.html" starts with how-to, but the latter parts are mostly code check-in comments. I used them to find features that never made it into the documentation.
In terms of code documentation, it begins with either // or /* (Even that puts you ahead of many open source projects, which have few or no comments beyond the GPL boilerplate)
I retired a coupe years ago, and haven't touched VTS as coder or user since then, so I'm afraid you are on your own. The Visual Studio debugger is your friend - set breakpoints, step into code. And the smart editor features (open definition / open declaration) are also useful. One (more) caveat: the code has a number of namespaces, and there are duplicate classnames that can sometimes confuse Visual Studio's editor. Good luck!
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Thanks John for the reply. I was afraid that would be the answer.
I just spent the last 8 months creating a BACnet server and VTS was helpful in figuring things out. I also used YABE and BACnet Test Suite demo (we don't have funds for the full suite) as well as trying to decipher the ASHRAE Spec. and it was a struggle getting definitive information about how things are supposed to work in BACnet. So, I am going to assume you had some knowledge of BACnet and will ask if you could point me in the direction of resources about how it is supposed to work. I know you said you are retired but I was hoping those memory locations hadn't faded away completely yet. :)
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Robert, I will echo what John said, congratulations!
...point me in the direction of resources about how it is supposed to work.
First I would point you to The BACnet Institute https://www.thebacnetinstitute.org/ for instructional material and join the BACnet-L mailing list http://www.bacnet.org/Contact/BACnet-L.htm where you will find lots of developers willing to help! Quite a large number of the members of the BACnet Committee are still active in the community.
Joel
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Is there documentation of any kind about the various pieces of the VTS project/solution? I have finally gotten things to build using VS 2015 and the result creates a runnable application, so far. (I haven't yet tried to run it thru its paces to see if it runs like the executable that I downloaded and have been using.) I had to edit the PTP project options and a couple of source files to get it to even compile. It wasn't difficult but I was doing things essentially blind. So, having gotten to here without a heavy amount of effort, I was wondering before I dove in headfirst, if there was any documentation about what the structure of the code and how everything is supposed to go together? I looked in the DOCs directory but I don't see what I am looking for.
Last edit: Robert Cook 2020-11-23
Congratulations on being able to build!
The only documentation is what's in the "Docs" directory, and that is almost entirely user-level stuff. The badly-named "QuickStart.html" starts with how-to, but the latter parts are mostly code check-in comments. I used them to find features that never made it into the documentation.
In terms of code documentation, it begins with either // or /* (Even that puts you ahead of many open source projects, which have few or no comments beyond the GPL boilerplate)
I retired a coupe years ago, and haven't touched VTS as coder or user since then, so I'm afraid you are on your own. The Visual Studio debugger is your friend - set breakpoints, step into code. And the smart editor features (open definition / open declaration) are also useful. One (more) caveat: the code has a number of namespaces, and there are duplicate classnames that can sometimes confuse Visual Studio's editor. Good luck!
Thanks John for the reply. I was afraid that would be the answer.
I just spent the last 8 months creating a BACnet server and VTS was helpful in figuring things out. I also used YABE and BACnet Test Suite demo (we don't have funds for the full suite) as well as trying to decipher the ASHRAE Spec. and it was a struggle getting definitive information about how things are supposed to work in BACnet. So, I am going to assume you had some knowledge of BACnet and will ask if you could point me in the direction of resources about how it is supposed to work. I know you said you are retired but I was hoping those memory locations hadn't faded away completely yet. :)
Robert, I will echo what John said, congratulations!
First I would point you to The BACnet Institute https://www.thebacnetinstitute.org/ for instructional material and join the BACnet-L mailing list http://www.bacnet.org/Contact/BACnet-L.htm where you will find lots of developers willing to help! Quite a large number of the members of the BACnet Committee are still active in the community.
Joel
Joel,
Thanks for the information. I had not seen the mailing list before. Don't know how I missed it.
Regards,
Robert