The OROCOS Real-Time Toolkit Installation Guide

Orocos was designed with portability in mind. Currently, we support RTAI/LXRT (http://www.rtai.org), GNU/Linux userspace, Xenomai (Xenomai.org). So, you can first write your software as a normal Linux program, using the framework for testing and debugging purposes in plain userspace Linux and recompile later to another real-time target.

Orocos uses the even/stable uneven/unstable version numbering scheme, just as the Linux kernel. A particular version is represented by three numbers separated by dots. An even middle number indicates a stable version. For example :

This numbering allows to develop and release two kinds of versions, where the unstable version is mainly for testing new features and designs and the stable version is for users wanting to run a reliable system.

Before you install Orocos, verify that you have the following software installed on your platform :

All these packages are provided by most Linux distributions. Take also a look on the Orocos.org RTT download page for the latest information.

The tool you will need is cmake In Debian, you can use the official Debian version using

  apt-get install cmake

If this does not work for you, you can download cmake from the CMake homepage.

Download the orocos-rtt-1.4.1-src.tar.bz2 package from the Orocos webpage.

Extract it using :

  tar -xvjf orocos-rtt-1.4.1-src.tar.bz2

Then proceed as in:

 
  mkdir orocos-rtt-1.4.1/build 
  cd orocos-rtt-1.4.1/build
  ../configure --with-<target> [--prefix=/usr/local][--with-linux=/usr/src/linux]
  make
  make check
  make install 

Where

See configure --help for a full list of options.

	Note
	The configure script is a wrapper around the 'cmake' command and must be rerun after you installed missing libraries (like Boost, ...) before you can build the RTT.

The RTT can be configured depending on you target. For embedded targets, the large scripting infrastructure and use of exceptions can be left out. When CORBA is available, an additional library is built which allows components to communicate over a network.

In order to configure the RTT in detail, you need to invoke the ccmake command:

 
  cd orocos-rtt-1.4.1/build
  cmake .. 

from your build directory. It will offer a configuration screen. The keys to use are 'arrows'/'enter' to modify a setting, 'c' to run a configuration check (may be required multiple times), 'g' to generate the makefiles. If an additional configuration check is required, the 'g' key can not be used and you must press again 'c' and examine the output.

  ../configure --enable-corba

  ../configure --embedded

The make command will have created a liborocos-rtt-<target>.so library, and if CORBA is enabled a liborocos-rtt-corba-<target>.so library.

The make docapi and make docpdf dochtml (both in 'build') commands build API documentation and PDF/HTML documentation in the build/doc directory.

When you want to build for another target, create a new build-<target> directory and simply re-invoke ../configure --with-<target> from that build directory.

If this step fails, it means that you have not everything installed which is needed for a basic Orocos build. Most users don't have the Boost library (libboost-dev or libboost-devel) installed. Install this package from the binary or source package repository of your Linux distribution, or download and install it from the Boost project. As soon as the configure step succeeds, all the rest will succeed too. Use the mailinglist at <orocos-dev@lists.mech.kuleuven.be> for support questions.

RTAI comes with documentation for configuration and installation. During 'make menuconfig', make sure that you enable the following options (in addition to options you feel you need for your application) :

After configuring you must run 'make' and 'make install' in your RTAI directory: make sudo make install

After installation, RTAI can be found in /usr/realtime. You'll have to specify this directory in the RTAI_INSTALL_DIR option during 'ccmake'.

LXRT is a all-in-one scheduler that works for kernel and userspace. So if you use this, you can still run kernel programs but have the ability to run realtime programs in userspace. Orocos provides you the libraries to build these programs. Make sure that the following RTAI kernel modules are loaded

For example, by executing as root: modprobe rtai_lxrt; modprobe rtai_sem.

Application which use LXRT as a target need special flags when being compiled and linked. Especially :

The RTT uses the native Xenomai API to address the real-time scheduler. The Xenomai kernel modules can be found in /usr/xenomai/modules. Only the following kernel modules need to be loaded:

in that order. For example, by executing as root: insmod xeno_hal.ko; insmod xeno_nucleus.ko; insmod xeno_native.ko.

Application which use Xenomai as a target need special flags when being compiled and linked. Especially :

	Note
	If your distribution does not provide the TAO libraries, or you want to use the OCI version, you need to build manually. These instructions are for building on Linux. See the ACE and TAO installation manuals for building on your platform.

You need to make an ACE/TAO build on your workstation. Download the package here: OCI Download. Unpack the tar-ball, and enter ACE_wrappers. Then do: export ACE_ROOT=$(pwd) export TAO_ROOT=$(pwd)/TAO Configure ACE for Linux by doing: ln -s ace/config-linux.h ace/config.h ln -s include/makeinclude/platform_linux.GNU include/makeinclude/platform_macros.GNU Finally, type: make cd TAO make cd orbsvcs make This finishes your TAO build.

Orocos will first try to detect your location of ACE and TAO using the ACE_ROOT and TAO_ROOT variables. If these are set, you can enable CORBA support (ENABLE_CORBA) within CMake.

Alternatively, when you use the configure wrapper, you can specify:

  ../configure --enable-corba

Once you compile and link your application with Orocos and with the CORBA functionality enabled, you must provide the correct include and link flags in your own Makefile if TAO and ACE are not installed in the default path. Then you must add: