Using code from Simulink model in HIL

Steps of converting a Simulink model to code usable in Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation:

1. Checkout/pull Simulink model from repository to your local.
2. Run Simulink model and confirm it finishes as expected. If not, inform the model maintainer and ask them to commit/push the model with correct settings to repo. 
3. Confirm that C/C++ code can be generated from model. Sometimes an s-function build file (mexw64) exists but its source code is missing, which allows the model to run but prevents code generation.
4. Copy code to Visual Studio and verify that you can build and run it. There are cases where Simulink is more forgiving of errors like uninitialized variables, or missing #include <cmath> but Visual Studio cannot build the code.
5. Copy code to real time Linux PC and verify code can be build there too.
6. Commit code to its own repo.
7. Run HIL with new code and verify HIL works as expected.

Why is file hash comparison faster than byte-wise comparison

Question: Since calculating the hash of a file requires reading every byte, why is comparing hashes of two files faster than byte wise comparison of file contents?

Answer: In hash comparison, each file's hash is computed once (by reading all its bytes), and then the two hashes, which are small fixed-size values (e.g., 256-bit or 512-bit), are compared. Comparing two hashes takes constant time, regardless of file size. In a byte-wise comparison, if there are N bytes, in the worst case where files are the same, N comparisons have to be made. 

• Hash comparison = reading file + 1 comparison.
• Byte-wise comparison = reading file + N comparisons.