Structs are a newly introduced feature to the VSS-syntax. Please note that all VSS-tools exporters do not yet support structs.
VSS has historically supported only the following datatypes:
In addition to this VSS arrays of the datatypes given above has been supported. This has been considered insufficient for some use-cases. Typical examples are when something cannot be described by a single value, but multiple values are needed.
A few hypothetical examples include:
Based on this a syntax for supporting structs in VSS has been defined
The struct support in VSS is introduced to facilitate logical binding/grouping of data that originates from the same source. It is intended to be used only when it is important that the data is read or written in an atomic operation. It is not intended to be used to specify how data shall be packaged and serialized when transported.
By this reason VSS-project will not introduce shorter datatypes (like uint1,uint4) to enable bit-encoding of data.
The order of elements in a struct is from a VSS perspective considered as arbitrary.
The VSS project will by this reason not publish guidelines on how to order items in the struct to minimize size,
and no concept for introducing padding will exist.
Structs shall be used in VSS standard catalog only when considered to give a significant advantage compared to using only primitive datatypes.
VSS supports a keyword aggregate that can be used on branches
to indicate that the branch preferably shall be read and written in atomic operations.
The keyword is however currently not used in the standard catalog, and it is not known if any implementation exists that actually consider it.
There have been criticism that aggregate changes the semantic meaning of branches and signals, i.e. that a signal is no longer handed as an independent object.
The exact meaning of aggregate is furthermore not well defined by VSS.
Shall for example a write request (or update of sensor values) be rejected by an implementation
if not all signals in the branch are updated in the same operation?
Semantic interpretation is also ambiguous if the branch contains a mix of sensors, attributes and actuators.
Using structs as datatype is better aligned with the view that VSS signals are independent objects,
and the semantic ambiguities related to aggregate are not present for structs.
Aggregate could however be useful as information on deployment level.
It gives the possibility to indicate that in this particular deployment the signals in the branch shall be treated as an aggregate.
Exact meaning of the aggregate keyword is then deployment specific.
With this view, aggregate shall never be used in the standard catalog, but can be used in overlays for deployment-specific purposes.
A signal of struct datatype shall be defined in the same way as other VSS signals, the only difference would be that instead of using a primitive datatype there shall be a reference to a struct datatype. This means that structs can be used for all types of VSS signals (i.e. sensor, attribute and actuator). If a signal of struct datatype is sent or received, VSS expects all included items to have valid values, i.e. all items are mandatory. For example, if a struct contains the items A, B and C - then it is expected that the sent signal contains value for all items. If some items are considered optional then the value range of the items must be adapted to include values indicating “not available” or “undefined”, or additional items needs to be added to indicate which items that have valid values.
VSS makes no assumption on how structs are transferred or stored by implementations. It is however expected that they are read and written by atomic operations. This means that the data storage shall be “locked” while the items of the struct are read, preventing changes to happen while reading/writing the items.
Structs shall be defined in a separate tree intended for definition of datatypes only. This means that signal definitions and struct definitions cannot exist in the same files. Tooling must thus accept one (or more) parameters for specifying datatype definition(s). The tree must have a single branch as root, i.e. it is not possible to have a struct as root.
Currently no structs have been introduced to the VSS standard catalog, but it has been agreed
that the VSS standard catalog type root shall be called Types, and that types added to VSS standard catalog will be added to the Types.Vehicle branch.
For example, if a type for GNSS location would be added to the VSS standard catalog in the future, it may be called Types.Vehicle.GNSSLocationType.
User extensions could then be added as sub-branches to Types, like Types.OEM.SomeOEMType.
The top level datatypes file(s) (e.g. vss_types.vspec) can refer to other datatype files similar to the
top VSS file.
It is possible to specify that multiple datatype files shall be used, but all datatypes must belong to the same root.
This means if the first file defines A.B, then the seconds file can define A.C, but not X.Y as that would
result in two roots (A and X).
For current vss-tools support for structs see documentation in the vss-tools repository.
The VSS syntax and tooling shall not enforce any restrictions on naming for the datatype tree.
It may even use the same branch structure as the signal tree.
This means that it theoretically at the same time could exist both a signal A.B.C and a struct A.B.C.
This is not a problem as it always from context is clear whether a name refers to a signal or a datatype.
This could be a hypothetical content of a VSS datatype file
Types:
type: branch
Types.DeliveryInfo:
type: struct
description: A struct datatype containing info for each delivery
Types.DeliveryInfo.Address:
datatype: string
type: property
description: Destination address
Types.DeliveryInfo.Receiver:
datatype: string
type: property
description: Name of receiver
This struct definition could then be referenced from the VSS signal tree
Delivery:
datatype: Types.DeliveryInfo
type: sensor
The datatype file may contain sub-branches and #include-statements just like regular VSS files
Types:
type: branch
Types.Powertrain:
type: branch
description: Powertrain datatypes.
#include Powertrain/Powertrain.vspec Types.Powertrain
Two ways of referring to a datatype are considered correct:
In Datatype Tree:
In Signal Tree:
Relative paths (e.g. ../Powertrain.SomeStruct) are not allowed.
Structs in parent branches will not be visible, in those cases absolute path needs to be used instead.
The reference by leaf name is applicable only for structs referencing other structs!
It is expected of implementations to support atomic read/write/subscribe of complete signals defined with struct datatype.
They may support read of parts of signal, e.g. DeliveryList.Receiver
It is allowed to use a struct type in an array
DeliveryList:
datatype: Types.DeliveryInfo[]
type: sensor
description: List of deliveries
By default the array has an arbitrary number of element and may be empty.
If a fixed size array is wanted the keyword arraysize can be used to specify size:
DeliveryList:
datatype: Types.DeliveryInfo[]
arraysize: 5
type: sensor
description: List of deliveries
For array datatypes (like above) VSS implementations may support several mechanisms
DeliveryList[2] (index mechanism is implementation dependent)It is allowed to refer to a structure datatype from within a structure
OpenHours:
type: struct
description: A struct datatype containing information on open hours
OpenHours.Open:
datatype: uint8
type: property
max: 24
description: Time the address opens
OpenHours.Close:
datatype: uint8
type: property
max: 24
description: Time the address close
DeliveryInfo:
type: struct
description: A struct datatype containing info for each delivery
DeliveryInfo.Address:
datatype: string
type: property
description: Destination address
DeliveryInfo.Receiver:
datatype: string
type: property
description: Name of receiver
DeliveryInfo.Open:
datatype: OpenHours
type: property
description: When is receiver available
The order of declaration/definition shall not matter.
As signals and datatypes are defined in different trees this is a topic only for struct definitions referring to other struct definitions.
A hypothetical example is shown below. An item in the struct DeliveryInfo can refer to the struct OpenHours even if that struct
is defined further down in the same file.
If using -vt < file> multiple times all files except the first will be treated similar to overlays.
This means that is allowed to define A.B.C in multiple files, but then subsequent (re-)definitions will overwrite
what has been defined previously.
DeliveryInfo:
type: struct
description: A struct datatype containing info for each delivery
...
DeliveryInfo.Open:
datatype: OpenHours
type: property
description: When is receiver available
OpenHours:
type: struct
description: A struct datatype containing information on open hours
...
Inline/anonymous structs are not allowed!
VSS supports default values.
Default values are not allowed for signals of struct datatype.
This also mean that VSS does not need to specify notation for struct values.
An exception is arrays of struct-datatypes, where “empty array”, i.e. [] shall be supported as default value.
It shall be possible to define default values for properties (unless the item is of struct datatype). If all items of a struct datatype have default values, then a signal (or item) using the struct datatype is also considered to have a default value.
VSS supports specification of allowed values.
Using allowed for type: property is allowed (if allowed is supported for the used datatype).
Using allowed for signals and items of struct datatype or array of struct datatype is not allowed.