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Reply To: | Vlietstra, Joe (Space Systems) |
Date: | Thu, 7 Feb 2002 08:04:29 -0800 |
Content-Type: | text/plain |
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> From: Stephen Leake [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 6:33 AM
>
> Ah, the luxury of having the bandwidth to upload the entire code set
> :).
>
> I never had the experience directly, but apparently in the Bad Old
> Days you could not do that, and had to upload the smallest possible
> patches. Actually, some of my current missions still plan to operate
> in that mode.
We still operate that way due to limited contact time with our birds.
"Patchability" can become a driving factor in the software design and
tool selection. Rational Software has a "patch linker" which supports
small code patches. Similar tricks can be performed with GNU tools.
Changes to data structures present the biggest problem when patching
flight software. Ada provides a lot of options (access functions,
reserving space with 'Size rep clause, etc.), but the safest approach
seems to be uploading a new flight image (which may require multiple
orbits).
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