flashcontainer

Tools for Creating Flashable Parameter Container

Pargen - Parameter File Generator

The main tool in flashcontainer is called Pargen. Pargen is generating data files for parameter values or other data structures that can to be stored in flash memory. It allows to change the data without recompilation by reading definitions from an XML file.

Flashcontainter also includes tailored front ends for Pargen to simplify special use cases. See the TC3xx tool description chapter for generating Infineon Aurix TC3xx boot mode headers structures.

Concept and Features

• Read input from a schema validated XML file
• Generate C-Source stubs for embedding into the application source amd testing environments
• Generate Intel Hex files for flashing with a programmer
• Generate GNU linker include file for mapping the parameter to absolute addresses

Installation

The package is available on Pypi and can be installed using

pip install flashcontainer

A python 3.8 or higher version is required.

The parameter generator tool can then by called on cmdline using

$ pargen -h
usage: pargen [-h] [--ihex] [--csrc] [--gld] [--a2l] [--pyhexdump] [--destdir directory] [--filename basename] [--static] [--modify name=value] [--version] file

pargen 0.4.0: A tool for generating flashable parameter container.

positional arguments:
  file                  name of the XML parameter definition file

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --ihex                generate intelhex file
  --csrc                generate c/c++ header and source files
  --gld                 generate GNU linker include file for parameter symbol generation
  --a2l                 generate A2L parameter description file
  --pyhexdump           generate pyHexDump print configuration file
  --destdir directory, -o directory
                        specify output directory for generated files
  --filename basename, -f basename
                        set basename for generated files
  --static, -s          create static comment output without dynamic elements like date and time
  --modify name=value, -m name=value
                        modify parameter value using name=value notation
  --version             show program's version number and exit

Copyright (c) 2022-2023 Haju Schulz <[e-mail]>. Visit https://github.com/nhjschulz/flashcontainer for full documentation and examples.

The flashcontainer Developing page on Github explains how to use unreleased development builds or how to setup a development environment.

XML Definitions File

The flash container configuration for Pargen is a XML definition file with the format explained below.

TL;DR

The examples folder shows how to configure Pargen for various use cases. Most of it is likely self explanatory. Read the examples.md files inside the examples folder to learn more about them. To understand Pargen's XML capabilities in depth, read on.

XML Configuration File Anatomy

The XML follows an XSD-schema defined in pargen_1.0.xsd. It is highly recommended to use an XML editor with schema validation support to avoid or detect validations already while editing. Visual Studio Code is a perfect choice, given the "XML Language Support" extension from Red Hat is installed. This extensions brings validation and "IntelliSense" to editing XML files.

The file defines the following data element hierarchy. The "..." lines mean that the preceding element may appear multiple times:

  <pd:Container>
    <pd:blocks>
      <pd:block>
        <pd:parameter> or <pd:crc>
        ...
      </pd:block>
      ...
    <pd:blocks>
    ...
  </pd:Container>

XML Root Element

The XML file uses XSD schema validation and a namespace. This requires the following (static) XML element to be used as the root XML element at the beginning of the file:

?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<pd:pargen xmlns:pd="http://nhjschulz.github.io/1.0/pargen"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://nhjschulz.github.io/1.0/pargen http://nhjschulz.github.io/xsd/pargen_1.0.xsd" >

Container Element

The top level configuration element is the container. A container maps its parameter blocks to absolute addresses by the at attribute. Address attributes inside block elements are offsets to the at attribute value.

Container Element Attributes

Attribute	Description	optional	default
name	The container name.	No
at	Absolute address of the container.	No

Container Child Elements

Element	Description	Multiplicity
blocks	Parent Element for blocks	1

Example Container Element

<pd:container name="UCBRange" at="0xAF400000">
  <pd:blocks>
  ....
  </pd:blocks>
</pd:container>

Block Element

A block element defines a contiguous memory area inside a container. Blocks contain an optional header and parameters at unique offsets inside the block memory range. Gaps between parameters are filled with the byte value specified using the 'fill' attribute. A container may have 1 to many block children inside a blocks element.

Block Attributes

Attribute	Description	optional	default
name	The block name.	No
offset	Memory start offset inside container. Value may be "." to use the next free offset inside the container.	No
length	Number of bytes covered by this block	No
align	block alignment to the next 1,2,4,8 bytes boundary	Yes	1
fill	byte value used to fill gaps.	Yes	0x00
endianness	LE or BE: Little or big endian byte order	Yes	LE

Block Child Elements

Element	Description	Multiplicity
comment	Optional comment text for this block	0..1
header	Optional header with id, version and length information	0..1
data	Parent element for block parameter	1

Block Header Element

Pargen blocks may contain a header at the beginning of the block memory area. This optional header contains block identification, version and length information. The header supports parameter validation to verify correctness and compatibility with the using application during runtime. The safety example in the examples folder shows how to use the header in combination with a CRC for this purpose.

The header data is a 16 byte long data structure with the following layout:

struct sruct_pargen_header_type
{
    uint16_t id;        /* from id header attribute */
    uint16_t major;     /* from major header attribute */
    uint16_t minor;     /* from minor header attribute */
    uint16_t dataver;   /* from version header attribute */
    uint32_t reserved;  /* reserved = 0x00000000 */
    uint32_t length;    /* from length block attribute */
};

Application can freely decide how to use the id, major, minor and dataver header fields. The proposed usage is as follows:

• id - A unique id to identify the blocks purpose. (Example: 1:CAN Bus settings, 2 :Motor parameters, ...)
• Major.Minor - A version pair defining the layout of the block
• dataver - The version or build number of the parameter set

The header data is internally handled as a parameter. Space for any further parameter starts at offset 16 (0x10) if the header is used.

Example Block Element

<pd:block offset="0x0000" name="UCB_BMHD0" length="0x1F4" fill="0x00" endianness="LE">
    <pd:header id="0x0A" major="1" minor="0" version="1"></pd:header>
    <pd:comment>Aurix Bootmode Headers</pd:comment>
    <pd:data>
      ....
    </pd:data>
</pd:block>

Parameter Element

A parameter element defines a single parameter inside a block. Blocks may have one to many parameter elements.

Parameter Element Attributes

Attribute	Description	optional	default
offset	Memory start offset inside block. Value may be "." to use the next free offset inside the block.	No
name	The parameter name.	No
type	Parameter type, one of [u]int{bits} with bits one of 8,16,32,64 or float32,float64 or utf8	No
align	Parameter offset alignment to the next 1,2,4,8 bytes boundary	Yes	1

Parameter Child Elements

Element	Description	Multiplicity
comment	Optional comment text for this parameter	0..1
value	The parameter value	1

Parameter Element Example

<pd:param offset="0x004" name="STAD" type="uint32">
  <pd:comment>Application entry point address</pd:comment>
  <pd:value>0x80028000</pd:value>

Parameter Value Element

The value element of a parameter holds the parameter value inside its text element using a JSON style syntax. The following subset of JSON definitions are supported:

Value type	Examples
Integer values in decimal or hexadecimal	1, -2, 0xABCDEF
Floating point variables	3.141, 1E-005
Strings in double quotes	"Hello world!"
One-dimensional arrays	[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Crc Element

The crc element defines an integer parameter. The difference to a normal integer parameter is the automatic value calculation using a crc algorithm. Instead of a parameter value child element, memory and config elements are used to define crc calculation parameters.

Crc Element Attributes

Attribute	Description	optional	default
offset	Memory start offset inside block. Value may be "." to use the next free offset inside the block	No
name	The crc parameter name.	No
type	Parameter type, one of uint{bits} with bits one of 8,16,32,64	No
align	Parameter offset alignment to the next 1,2,4,8 bytes boundary	Yes	1

Crc Child Elements

Element	Description	Multiplicity
comment	Optional comment text for this parameter	0..1
memory	The crc memory range and access method	1
config	The optional crc computation parameter	0..1

Crc Memory Element

The memory element defines the memory range used to calculate the crc and the access method to this memory range if byte swapping is needed. The bytes at the range boundaries are included into the crc calculation.

Attribute	Description	optional	default
from	Start address for crc calculation	No
to	End address for crc calculation. The value may be "." to represent an address right before the crc offset.	No
access	Bit width in case of swapping (8,16,32,64)	yes	8
swap	Enable bytes swapping using access size	Yes	false

Crc Config Element

The config element defines the crc calculation parameters to enable arbitrary crc methods. The values for common used crc methods can be taken from this crc catalog page. The default values select the IEEE802.3 crc calculation also known as CRC-32. Note that the bit size of the crc is not part of these parameters, but derived from the type attribute of the crc element.

Attribute	Description	optional	default
polynomial	polynomial coefficients	yes	0x04C11DB7
init	Start value, usual 0 or -1	yes	0xFFFFFFFF
rev_in	Process bytes MSB(false) or LSB(true) first.	yes	true
rev_out	Enable reflection of final crc result	Yes	true
final_xor	Perform final XOR of the crc	yes	true

Crc Element Example

<pd:crc offset="0x008" name="CRCBMHD" type="uint32">
  <pd:memory from="0x0000" to="0x0007" access="32" swap="true"/>
  <pd:config polynomial="0x04C11DB7" init="0xFFFFFFFF" rev_in="true" rev_out="true" final_xor="true" ></pd:config>
</pd:crc>

Generating TC3xx Boot Mode Header Structures

The tc3xx tool is used to generate Pargen definition XML files for boot mode header structures. A Boot mode header structure is a data block in flash memory, which is defined by Infineon TC3xx processors. It gets processed by startup software to select which image to boot into.

General usage of the tc3xx command:

tc3xx  [-h] [--version] {tool name} ...

TC3xx ABMHD - Alternate Boot Mode Header Generator

Tc3xx supports the abmhd tool to a generate an alternate boot mode header structure for firmware hex files. The tc3xx abmhd tool is controlled by options and produces a Pargen definition file. The definitions file is written to stdout id no output file option is given. This allows to "pipe" the definitions directly into Pargen.

tc3xx abmhd usage:

usage: tc3xx abmhd [-h] [--stad STADABM] [--from CHKSTART] [--to CHKEND] [--abmhdid ABMHDID] [--output filename] ADDRESS HEXFILE    

Generate TC3XX alternate boot mode header Pargen definition file.   

Example:
    tc3xx abmhd --stad 0x80028000 --from 0x8002000 --to 0x8004000  0x80000100 fw.hex | pargen --ihex -f abmhd -   

positional arguments:
  ADDRESS               flash address of alternate boot mode header.
  HEXFILE               name of hexfile with user data content    

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --stad STADABM, -s STADABM
                        user code start address (default: lowest address in hexfile)
  --from CHKSTART, -f CHKSTART
                        begin of range to be checked (default: lowest address in hexfile)
  --to CHKEND, -t CHKEND
                        end of range to be checked (default: highest address in hexfile + 1)
  --abmhdid ABMHDID, -i ABMHDID
                        alternate Boot Mode Header Identifier value (default=0xFA7CB359)
  --output filename, -o filename
                        file name of generated Pargen xml file (default: <stdout>)

Issues, Ideas And Bugs

If you have further ideas or you found some bugs, great! Create an issue or if you are able and willing to fix it by yourself, clone the repository and create a pull request.

Used Non Standard Python Libraries

The project uses the following non standard python libraries:

Library	Purpose	License
lxml	XML parsing and validation	BSD-3-Clause
intelhex	intel hex file generation	BSD
json5	JSON read and write (with hexadecimal number support)	Apache
toml	Accessing toml file content	MIT

License

The whole source code is published under the BSD 3-Clause License. Consider also the different licenses of used third party libraries too!

Contribution

We welcome contribution, but unless you explicitly state otherwise: Any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, shall be licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.