[PRE REVIEW]: SwiftVISA: Controlling Instrumentation with a Swift-based Implementation of the VISA Communication Protocol

[editorialbot]

Submitting author: @OHildreth (Owen Hildreth)
Repository: https://github.com/SwiftVISA/SwiftVISASwift.git
Branch with paper.md (empty if default branch):
Version: 1.0.0
Editor: @dhhagan
Reviewers: @MatthieuDartiailh
Managing EiC: Kristen Thyng

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gitinspector failed to run statistical information for the repository

[editorialbot]

Wordcount for paper.md is 1542

[editorialbot]

Failed to discover a valid open source license

[editorialbot]

⚠️ An error happened when generating the pdf.

[kthyng]

Hi @OHildreth and thanks for your submission. I see your note saying the submission is spread across 8 repositories... can you list them here, or are they already listed somewhere?

[kthyng]

Also can you take a look at the error in your paper compilation?

[danielskatz]

To check the compilation error, you can click on the error link above. In general, please follow the example paper. You can use the command @editorialbot generate pdf after making changes to the .md file to make a new PDF. editorialbot commands need to be the first entry in a new comment.

[danielskatz]

The error says "found a tab character that violate indentation while scanning a plain scalar at line 23 column 11 (Psych::SyntaxError)"

[OHildreth]

Hi @kthyng,

The repositories are in the SwiftVISA Organization page and are listed here:
https://github.com/orgs/SwiftVISA/repositories

• SwiftVISASwift
• CoreSwiftVISA
• SwiftVISAMessenger
• NISwiftVISA
• NISwiftVISAMessenger
• CVISATypes
• SwiftVISA
• NISwiftVISAService

We have made multiple repositories to separate code responsibilities and capabilities. The original SwiftVISA wrapper only works on macOS 11.15 and lower. To overcome this issue, we made a number of smaller Packages and Services that would allow users to control VISA compatible instruments on iOS, padOS, and macOS along with macOS up to 12.3.

[OHildreth]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

⚠️ An error happened when generating the pdf.

[OHildreth]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[OHildreth]

@danielskatz

Thanks for finding the error. It compiled when I checked everything earlier, but I certainly wouldn't not have figured out what the error was without your help.

Thanks,
Owen

[danielskatz]

👋 @gkthiruvathukal - Would you be able to edit this submission?

[danielskatz]

@editorialbot invite @gkthiruvathukal as editor

[editorialbot]

Invitation to edit this submission sent!

[gkthiruvathukal]

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[danielskatz]

@editorialbot assign me as editor is also a valid command 🙂

[gkthiruvathukal]

@danielskatz Yes, I was trying to remember the correct incantation. I cannot take this one on right now. I sent you short message on Slack to explain. I will be able to help a bit more starting end of April. Thank you for understanding. (Chairperson life.)

[danielskatz]

👋 @dhhagan - are you able to edit this submission?

[danielskatz]

@editorialbot invite @dhhagan as editor

[editorialbot]

Invitation to edit this submission sent!

[dhhagan]

Hey @danielskatz I don't know that I have the right skillset to edit this paper, but I can oversee it if there is no one else better suited.

[dhhagan]

Hey @danielskatz I don't know that I have the right skillset to edit this paper, but I can oversee it if there is no one else better suited.

[dhhagan]

👋 @innat @xiaohk @jarrah42 do any of you have the time to review this manuscript?

[dhhagan]

@OHildreth I have been running into trouble finding reviewers with Swift experience both online and offline - do you have any recommended reviewers?

[OHildreth]

@dhhagan. I don't know anyone approaching automation this way. This is a side-project to address some issues I've had controlling my equipment Most academic-level equipment programming is being done ad-hoc using LabView, which everyone hates. I know some Swift developers that I've taken workshops with that I can recommend. They aren't academics but they are amazing programmers. I also know some people at Los Alamos that are extremely excited about this work because they would love to move away from LabView. I don't know if they would have github accounts since they aren't programmers. I've put their contact information below.

Are you looking for code-review or manuscript review? I've listed a few names that I quickly thought of, but I could probably find more if I knew specifically what you are looking for:

Mikey Ward

• Programming Expertise
• Big Nerd Ranch
• https://github.com/wookiee
• ward@bignerdranch.com (I think, I can't find his-email address, he mainly uses Slack and LinkedIn)
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikey-ward-75482814/

Daniel Hooks

• Group leader at Los Alamos with projects requiring automation
• dhooks@lanl.gov

[OHildreth]

@dhhagan, did that help? Do you want more reviewers?

[dhhagan]

@OHildreth thanks! I should have an answer for you shortly. (sorry about the delay...)

[OHildreth]

@dhhagan Thanks for the update. I was thinking, we could look at the people committing to the pyVISA project: https://github.com/pyvisa/pyvisa/graphs/contributors. They might have relevant experience for our SwiftVISA project.

[dhhagan]

👋 @hgrecco @MatthieuDartiailh would either of you be able/willing to review this manuscript for JOSS?

[MatthieuDartiailh]

I can try to give this a look though I am familiar with Swift.

I am not familiar with JOSS review process either. Where can I find the pdf and under which format should submit my review ?

[kyleniemeyer]

@MatthieuDartiailh JOSS reviews are a bit different than traditional academic journals: the reviews are checklist driven and take place openly in a GitHub issue like this one (this specific issue is just for getting the review process ready though).

The paper PDF is linked above in a prior comment, copied here for convenience:

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

but you can always get the latest version with the command @editorialbot generate pdf in a comment.

The software package itself is located at https://github.com/SwiftVISA/SwiftVISASwift.git

[MatthieuDartiailh]

Thanks for the explanation. I will start looking at the paper and the code but may not be able to test the code (I do not own a Mac and I do not have access to a linux VM at the moment). What will be the next steps and timeline ?

[MatthieuDartiailh]

Currently my main issue with the paper is the claim: SwiftVISASwift uses CoreSwiftVISA types and protocols and implements communication over TCI/IP instruments. This claim is overly broad since as far as I can tell this is limited to TCPIP:SOCKET resources and no support is offered for instruments relying on the VXI-11 protocol or the more recent hislip protocol.

[OHildreth]

@MatthieuDartiailh
I must not have worded things as clearly as I thought in the manuscript. I'm happy to fix that. The project is divided into multiple Repositories and evolutions. The original one, SwiftVISA, wraps National Instruments pre-compiled VISA framework and has most of the functionality that pyVISA does (USB, TCI/IP, etc.).

Using the original SwiftVISA requires both installing the VISA framework and recompiling SwiftVISA as you change Swift version. Additionally, it acts as a Framework, which is more work to use than a Swift Package. To address the Framework vs. Swift Package issue, we developed the NISwiftVISA along with the NISwiftVISAService. This still uses the underlying VISA framework, but has an intermediary NISwiftVISAService that handles communicating to the devices. Because it is still relying on the VISA framework, it handles communicating with all the main VISA instrument types (USB, TCI/IP, etc.).

NISwiftVISA solved the Package issue, but it had some MAJOR limitations starting with macOS Monterey. Specifically, the VISA framework not longer works under Monterey because Apple effectively blocked kernel extensions. If there are work arounds, National Instruments hasn't implemented them yet. That is why we wrote SwiftVISASwift. This latest iteration is a pure Swift Implementation. It doesn't rely on the VISA framework and is imported into your project as a Swift Package. The reason it is limited to TCI/IP is because 1) Apple's new USB driver system was very poorly documented and 2) the DriverKit entitlement was specific to vendors. Since we weren't Keysight, we couldn't request a DriverKit entitlement to Keysight devices. For the time, we settled for implementing the TCI/IP protocol. This hasn't hindered us or our calibrators since almost every instrument we had in the lab (10+) had an ethernet port. The few that didn't (mass flow controllers, furnaces) also didn't have USB ports either, so we used an Arudino as a communication bridge.

To address the USB limitation, we are considering using the recently released ORSSerialPort Package (previously a framework). That is still under debate because ORSSerialPort is limited to macOS and we are trying to make SwiftVISASwift work with iOS and padOS operating systems.

I haven't seen the HiSLIP protocol before, but it is something we can look into for the future. Overall, this has been a big project stretching over 4 years for us mainly done by one student, Connor Barnes. Reimplementing VISA is a big project and we've tried to provide multiple solutions based upon the needs of the user (HiSLIP for example would likely work with SwiftVISA), easy of use (NiSwiftVISA as a package instead of a framework), and preparing for the future (SwiftVISASwift).

Overall, I was hoping that this publication would help bring some attention to the project and help get more collaborators to expand it (for example, someone that needs HiSLIP might be able to help implement it). I recently had some people from Los Alamos out and they were extremely excited about the work, we are currently working on writing an NSF REU to train CS students to write instrumentation software during the year at the University and then do a summer internship at a National Lab to help them update their instrumentation control software using some implementation of SwiftVISA (depending on the equipment and requirements).

I hope this helps and I'm more than happy to expand the manuscript to make things clearer. The journal guidelines said to keep the manuscript short and let the repository document the code and intent. So maybe I was too short in my discussions.

[MatthieuDartiailh]

Sorry if I gave the impression your paper was unclear. It is not so and I did follow the split between the different packages. Since this is only a pre-review and I don't think the actual issue to do the review was opened I just decided to share the one thing that bothered me and did not expand on the overall quality of the paper.

To make my point clearer, the VISA specification (https://www.ivifoundation.org/downloads/Architecture%20Specifications/vpp43_2022-05-19.pdf) makes a distinction between two kind of resource classes that can be used over TCPIP.

• One is the INSTR resource class. This resource class is not specific to the TCPIP bus and rely on either the VXI-11 protocol (most common case) or the hislip protocol. Typically this resource class does not require a port and its address string is typically of the form TCPIP::192.168.0.10::INSTR. The INSTR resource class is expected to support events (even though pyvisa-py does not support them). As far as I understand you do not support this resource class.
• the other is specific to the TCPIP bus and is the SOCKET resource class. The socket resource does not support any of the advanced mode of VISA (events, status byte reading through non text messages, etc) and is easy to use outside VISA since it does not rely on a specific protocol and any socket in any programming language can be used for communication.

What would make your paper more "correct" in a sense is to explicitly say that SwiftVISASwift only support TCPIP::SOCKET resources and that support for TCPIP::INSTR and USB::INSTR may be added in the future/is planned (whatever wording agrees the best with your actual plans).

[OHildreth]

@MatthieuDartiailh Thanks for the comment. That is a great point and easy to address in the manuscript with your suggestion. We currently only support TCIP::SOCKET as you pointed out and that the ::INSTR is planned for the future. The ::SOCKET was an easy test case to start with.

[OHildreth]

@MatthieuDartiailh I've updated the manuscript with a section listing known limitations (such as the TCIP:SOCKET you listed above) and future work. I also provided some examples of the actor branch of SwiftVISASwift that shows how to easily access resources asynchronously.

[MatthieuDartiailh]

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[OHildreth]

@MatthieuDartiailh @kyleniemeyer
Hi, I was wondering if there is anything I can do or issues I could address to help move the review forward?

Thanks,
Owen

[MatthieuDartiailh]

I had no chance to look at the latest version but the changes you described addressed my comments. Since this is a pre-review I have no idea what else I can do to help.

[arfon]

@dhhagan – given that @MatthieuDartiailh has shown their willingness to start the review here (thank you @MatthieuDartiailh!) I think we should move this forward to the main review stage and look for a second reviewer once the submission is under review.

[arfon]

@editorialbot add @MatthieuDartiailh as reviewer

[editorialbot]

@MatthieuDartiailh added to the reviewers list!

[arfon]

@editorialbot start review

[editorialbot]

OK, I've started the review over in #4752.

[arfon]

@MatthieuDartiailh @OHildreth – see you over in #4752 where the actual review will take place.

[jarrah42]

do you still need me to review this manuscript, or would it be better if I took a look at a different one?

[dhhagan]

Hi @jarrah42 yes, it would be very helpful. Let me add to the review thread.