RTT v1.x wiki

This wiki has only information for the RTT 1.x releases. For RTT 2.x, look at the Toolchain wiki.

Documentation suggestions

From recent discussion on ML, simply a place to put down ideas before we forget them ...

  • Use Wiki for FAQ instead of XML doc

FAQ

  • My shared libraries won't load
  • The deployer won't load my plugins
  • Can I use dynamic memory allocation, and where?
  • How do I run in real time? ie how do I configure my system to allow

Orocos to run in real-time

  • Why do I have periodic delays when attaching a remote deployer?
  • Configuring OmniORB instead of TAO
  • OmniORB options for IDL
  • How do I set a client application using pyOmniOrb (OmniORB python bindings)?

<quote> Actually it's an option of the omniidl compiler... the command to use is

omniidl -bcxx -Wba myIdlFile.idl

This will become definately a FAQ item :-) <quote>

  • My wiki page is blank

<quote> When your text is not appearing on your wiki page, it's because you ended your wiki page with an indented line. So if your last line is:

this is my last line

the wiki code clears the whole page. It's clearly a Drupal/wiki module thing/bug. <quote>

  • Is it possible to log messages from scripts and state machines?

Check out OCL's HmiConsoleOutput component.

  • What is the coding style used by Orocos?

You can take a look at the CODING_STYLE.txt file. Also, we worked out the indentation rules for Eclipse and Emacs.

  • Error linking readline with OCL's taskbrowser

Tutorials

  • Seems like I have to first read up on Activities. Can you point me to a good example for such a component test and mockobject in rtt/tests?
  • Hello world as an application
  • Hello world with the deployer
  • Use of reporting component
  • CMake and non-standard install location for Orocos
  • Distributed deployment - ie how to use more than one deployer, and setting up CORBA
  • Adding types to Orocos
  • Adding types to Orocos+Corba
  • Changing ReadDataPort/WriteDataPort to DataPort for CORBA-based deployment

System examples

  • Robotics
Examples like Stephen proposed earlier
Focus on : Kinematics, path planning, HMI/interfacing
  • Machine control
Similar to Robotics with without kinematics or path planning
Master controller that controls slave devices through a state machine
Focus on : state machines & events
  • Distributed
Sensor data processing using various distributed components
Focus on : Data flow

end

Examples and Tutorials

The tutorials and example code are split in two parts, one for new users and one for experienced users of the RTT.

There are several sources where you can find code and tutorials. Click below to read the rest of this post.The tutorials and example code are split in two parts, one for new users and one for experienced users of the RTT.

There are several sources where you can find code and tutorials. Some code is listed in wiki pages, other is downloadable in a separate package and finally you can find code snippets in the manuals too.

Simple examples

RTT Examples Get started with simple, ready-to-compile examples of how to create a component

Naming connections, not ports: Orocos' best kept secret

Using omniORBpy to interact with a component from Python

Advanced examples

These advanced examples are mainly about extending and configuring the RTT for your specific needs.

Using plugins and toolkits to support custom data types

Using non-periodic components to implement a simple TCP client

Using XML substitution to manage complex deployments

Using real-time logging

Developing plugins and toolkits

This is a work in progress and only for RTT 1.x !

Rationale

Problem: You want to pass custom types between distributed components, be able to see the value(s) of your custom type with in a deployer, and be able to read/write the custom type to/from XML files.

Solution: Develop two plugins that tell Orocos about your custom types.

<!-- break -->

Assumptions

  • The build directory is within the source directory. This helps with dynamic library loading.

Compatabilitry

Tested on v1.8 trunk on Mac OS X Leopard with omniORB from MacPorts, and Ubuntu Jaunty with ACE/TAO.

Files

See the attachments at the bottom of this page.

Overview

An RTT toolkit plugin provides information to Orocos about one or more custom types. This type of plugin allows RTT to display your types values in a deployer, load/save your types to/from XML files, and provides constructors and operators that can be used to manipulate your types within program scripts and state machines.

An RTT transport plugin provides methods to transport your custom types across CORBA, and hence between distributed Orocos components.

This is a multi-part example demonstrating plugins for two boost::posix_time types: ptime and time_duration.

  • Part 1 Without the plugin creates components that use your custom type, and demonstrates that Orocos does not know anything about these types
  • Part 2 Toolkit plugin demonstrates an Orocos plugin that makes the types available to Orocos. In a deployer, you can now see the values of your custom types
  • Part 3 Transport plugin demonstrates an Orocos transport plugin making your custom types available across CORBA. Now you can pass types between deployers.
  • TBD Part 4 will demonstrate XML manipulation
  • TBD Part 5 will demonstrate accesors and manipulators for use in scripts and state machines

For additional information on plugins and their development, see [1].

Also, the KDL toolkit and transport plugins are good examples. See src/bindings/rtt in the KDL source.

Structure

The overall structure of this examples is show below
.
|-- BoostToolkit.cpp
|-- BoostToolkit.hpp
|-- CMakeLists.txt
|-- config
|   |-- FindACE.cmake
|   |-- FindCorba.cmake
|   |-- FindOmniORB.cmake
|   |-- FindOrocos-OCL.cmake
|   |-- FindOrocos-RTT.cmake
|   |-- FindTAO.cmake
|   |-- UseCorba.cmake
|   `-- UseOrocos.cmake
|-- corba
|   |-- BoostCorbaConversion.hpp
|   |-- BoostCorbaToolkit.cpp
|   |-- BoostCorbaToolkit.hpp
|   |-- BoostTypes.idl
|   |-- CMakeLists.txt
|   `-- tests
|       |-- CMakeLists.txt
|       |-- corba-combined.cpp
|       |-- corba-recv.cpp
|       `-- corba-send.cpp
`-- tests
    |-- CMakeLists.txt
    |-- combined.cpp
    |-- no-toolkit.cpp
    |-- recv.cpp
    |-- recv.hpp
    |-- send.cpp
    `-- send.hpp

The toolkit plugin is in the root directory, with supporting test files in the tests directory.

CMake support files are in the config directory.

The transport plugin is in the corba directory, with supporting test files in the corba/tests directory.

Limitations

Currently, this example does
  • Show how to write a plugin telling Orocos about your custom types
  • Show how to write a transport plugin allowing Orocos to move your custom types between deployers/processes.
  • Demonstrate how to test said plugins.
  • Use either ACE/TAO or OmniORB for CORBA support

Currently, this example does not yet

  • Show how to read/write the custom types to/from XML file
  • Provide manipulators and/or accessors of your custom types, that can be used in scripts and state machines.
  • Does not demonstrate testing of the CORBA transport plugin within a single deployer, using two components. An optimization in RTT bypasses the CORBA mechanism in this case, rendering the test useless.
  • Does not deal with all intricacies of the boost types (eg all of the special values).

NB I could not find a method to get at the underlying raw 64-bit or 96-bit boost representation of ptime. Hence, the transport plugin inefficiently transports a ptime type using two separate data values. If you know of a method to get at the raw representation, I would love to know. Good luck in template land ...

References

[1] Extending the Real-Time Toolkit
AttachmentSize
BoostToolkit.hpp2.64 KB
BoostToolkit.cpp3.58 KB
CMakeLists.txt1.83 KB
corba/BoostCorbaToolkit.hpp934 bytes
corba/BoostCorbaToolkit.cpp1.34 KB
corba/QBoostCorbaConversion.hpp5.18 KB
corba/CMakeLists.txt738 bytes
plugins.tar_.bz214.24 KB

Part 1 Without the plugin

This is a work in progress

This part creates components that use your custom type, and demonstrates that Orocos does not know anything about these types.

Files

See the attachments at the bottom of Developing plugins and toolkits.

To build

In a shell

cd /path/to/plugins
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DOROCOS_TARGET=macosx -DENABLE_CORBA=OFF
make

For other operating systems substitute the appopriate value for "macosx" when setting OROCOS_TARGET (e.g. "gnulinux").

Tested in Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7.

To run

In a shell

cd /path/to/plugins/build
./no-toolkit

This starts a test case that uses an OCL taskbrowser to show two components: send and recv. If you issue a "ls" or "ls Send" command, you will get output similar to the following:

 Data Flow Ports: 
 RW(C)   unknown_t ptime          = (unknown_t)
 RW(C)   unknown_t timeDuration   = (unknown_t)

Each component has two ports, named ptime and time_duration. Notice that both ports are connected "(C)", but that Orocos considers each an unknown type with unknown value.

Part 2 Toolkit plugin will build a toolkit plugin that allows Orocos to understand these types.

Part 2 Toolkit plugin

This is a work in progress

This part creates a toolkit plugin making our types known to Orocos.

Files

See the attachments at the bottom of Developing plugins and toolkits

To build

Everything needed for this part was built in Part 1.

To run

In a shell

cd /path/to/plugins/build
./combined

The combined tests uses an OCL taskbrowser to show two components: send and recv. Typing an "ls" or "ls Send" command, as in Part 1, you will get something like the following:

RW(C) boost_ptime ptime          = 2009-Aug-09 16:14:19.724622
RW(C) boost_timeduration timeDuration   = 00:00:00.200005

Note that Orocos now knows the correct types (eg boost_ptime) and can display each ports value. Issue multiple ls commands and you will see the values change. The ptime is simply the date and time at which the send component set the port value, and the duration is the time between port values being set on each iteration (ie this should approximately be the period of the send component).

Toolkit plugin

The toolkit plugin is defined in BoostToolkit.hpp.

namespace Examples
{
    /// \remark these do not need to be in the same namespace as the plugin
 
    /// put the time onto the stream
    std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const boost::posix_time::ptime& t);
    /// put the time onto duration the stream
    std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const boost::posix_time::time_duration& d);
    /// get a time from the stream
    std::istream& operator>>(std::istream& is, boost::posix_time::ptime& t);
    /// get a time duration from the stream
    std::istream& operator>>(std::istream& is, boost::posix_time::time_duration& d);
The toolkit plugin is contained in an Examples namespace. First up we define input and output stream operators for each of our types.

    class BoostPlugin : public RTT::ToolkitPlugin
    {
    public:
        virtual std::string getName();
 
        virtual bool loadTypes();
        virtual bool loadConstructors();
        virtual bool loadOperators();
    };
 
    /// The singleton for the Toolkit.
    extern BoostPlugin BoostToolkit;
The actual plugin class and singleton object are then defined. The plugin provides a name that is unique across all plugins, and contains information on the types, constructors and operators for each or our custom types.

    /// provide ptime type to RTT type system
    /// \remark the 'true' argument indicates that we supply stream operators
    struct BoostPtimeTypeInfo : 
        public RTT::TemplateTypeInfo<boost::posix_time::ptime,true> 
    {
        BoostPtimeTypeInfo(std::string name) :
                RTT::TemplateTypeInfo<boost::posix_time::ptime,true>(name)
        {};
        bool decomposeTypeImpl(const boost::posix_time::ptime& img, RTT::PropertyBag& targetbag);
        bool composeTypeImpl(const RTT::PropertyBag& bag, boost::posix_time::ptime& img);
    };
 
    /// provide time duration type to RTT type system
    /// \remark the 'true' argument indicates that we supply stream operators
    struct BoostTimeDurationTypeInfo : 
        public RTT::TemplateTypeInfo<boost::posix_time::time_duration,true> 
    {
        BoostTimeDurationTypeInfo(std::string name) :
                RTT::TemplateTypeInfo<boost::posix_time::time_duration,true>(name)
        {};
        bool decomposeTypeImpl(const boost::posix_time::time_duration& img, RTT::PropertyBag& targetbag);
        bool composeTypeImpl(const RTT::PropertyBag& bag, boost::posix_time::time_duration& img);
    };
 
} // namespace Exampels
We then provide a type information class for each of our two custom types. These type info classes are the mechanism for Orocos to work with XML and our custom types.NB the true boolean value to each TypeInfo class indicates that stream operators are available (as defined above).

The toolkit plugin implementation is in the BoostToolkit.cpp file.

namespace Examples
{
    using namespace RTT;
    using namespace RTT::detail;
    using namespace std;
 
    std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const boost::posix_time::ptime& t)
    {
        os << boost::posix_time::to_simple_string(t);
        return os;
    }
 
    std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, const boost::posix_time::time_duration& d)
    {
        os << boost::posix_time::to_simple_string(d);
        return os;
    }
 
    std::istream& operator>>(std::istream& is, boost::posix_time::ptime& t)
    {
        is >> t;
        return is;
    }
 
    std::istream& operator>>(std::istream& is, boost::posix_time::time_duration& d)
    {
        is >> d;
        return is;
    }
After picking up some RTT workspaces, we declare the stream operators to use the underlying boost stream operators. TODO explain why need these stream operators.

    BoostPlugin BoostToolkit;
 
    std::string BoostPlugin::getName()
    {
        return "Boost";
    }
Next we create the singleton instance of the plugin as BoostToolkit. TODO explain naming scheme. Then we declare the unique name of this plugin, "Boost".

    bool BoostPlugin::loadTypes()
    {
        TypeInfoRepository::shared_ptr ti = TypeInfoRepository::Instance();
 
        /* each quoted name here (eg "boost_ptime") must _EXACTLY_ match that
           in the associated TypeInfo::composeTypeImpl() and
           TypeInfo::decomposeTypeImpl() functions (in this file), as well as
           the name registered in the associated Corba plugin's 
           registerTransport() function (see corba/BoostCorbaToolkit.cpp)
        */
        ti->addType( new BoostPtimeTypeInfo("boost_ptime") );
        ti->addType( new BoostTimeDurationTypeInfo("boost_timeduration") );
 
        return true;
    }
The loadTypes() method provides the actual association for Orocos, from a type name to a TypeInfo class. This is how Orocos identifies a type at runtime. The choice of name is critical - it is what is shown in the deployer for an items type, and should make immediate sense when you see it. It probably also should not be too long, to keep things readable within the deployer and taskbrowser. The name you use here for each type is very important and must match with names in other places (TODO list the other places?).

    bool BoostPlugin::loadConstructors()
    {
        // no constructors for these particular types
 
        return true;
    }
 
    bool BoostPlugin::loadOperators()
    {
        // no operators for these particular types
 
        return true;
    }
Currently this example does not provide any constructors or operators, useable in program scripts and state machines. TODO update this.

    bool BoostPtimeTypeInfo::decomposeTypeImpl(const boost::posix_time::ptime& source, 
                                             PropertyBag& targetbag)
    {
        targetbag.setType("boost_ptime");
        assert(0);
        return true;
    }
 
    bool BoostPtimeTypeInfo::composeTypeImpl(const PropertyBag& bag, 
                                              boost::posix_time::ptime& result)
    {
        if ( "boost_ptime" == bag.getType() ) // ensure is correct type
        {
            // \todo
            assert(0);
        }
        return false;
    }
The implementation of a TypeInfo class for one of our custom types must use the same type name as use in loadTypes() above. These functions would also provide the mechanism to load/save the type to/from XML. TODO update this.

ORO_TOOLKIT_PLUGIN(Examples::BoostToolkit)
This macro (lying outside the namespace!) takes the fully qualified singleton, and makes it available to the RTT type system at runtime. It basically makes the singleton identifiable as an RTT toolkit plugin, when Orocos loads the dynamic library formed from this toolkit.

Build system

Now the build system takes this .cpp file, and turns it into a dynamic library. We are going to examine the root CMakeLists.txt to see how to create this library, but for now, we will ignore the corba parts of that file.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.6)
 
# pick up additional cmake package files (eg FindXXX.cmake) from this directory
list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH "${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/config")
First we enforce the minimum CMake version we require, and ensure that we can pick up FindXXX.cmake files from our config directory

find_package(Orocos-RTT 1.6.0 REQUIRED corba)
find_package(Orocos-OCL 1.6.0 REQUIRED taskbrowser)
We have to find both Orocos RTT and Orocos OCL, and we require the additional corba component from RTT and the additional taskbrowser component from OCL.

include(${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/config/UseOrocos.cmake)
The UseOrocos.cmake file makes RTT and OCL available to us, and provides us with some useful macros (eg create_component).

create_component(BoostToolkit-${OROCOS_TARGET} 
  VERSION 1.0.0 
  BoostToolkit.cpp)
 
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(BoostToolkit-${OROCOS_TARGET} 
  boost_date_time)
The create_component macro makes an Orocos shared library for us. This library will contain only our toolkit plugin. Note that we make the library name dependent on the Orocos target we are building for (eg macosx or gnulinux). This allows us to have plugins for multiple architectures on the same machine (typically, gnulinux and xenomai, or similar). We also have to link the shared library against the boost "date time" library, as we are using certain boost functionality that is not available in the header files.

SUBDIRS(tests)
Lastly we also build the 'test' directory.

Tests

There are two very simply test components that communicate each of our custom types between them. Tests are very important when developing plugins. Trying to debug a plugin within a complete system is a daunting challenge - do it in isolation first.

The send component regularly updates the current time on its ptime port, and the duration between ptime port updates on its timeDuration port.

class Send : public RTT::TaskContext
{
public:
    RTT::DataPort<boost::posix_time::ptime>                ptime_port;
    RTT::DataPort<boost::posix_time::time_duration>    timeDuration_port;
public:
    Send(std::string name);
    virtual ~Send();
 
    virtual bool startHook();
    virtual void updateHook();
protected:
    boost::posix_time::ptime    lastNow;
};

The implementation is very simple, and will not be discussed in detail here.

#include "send.hpp"
 
Send::Send(std::string name) :
        RTT::TaskContext(name),
        ptime_port("ptime"),
        timeDuration_port("timeDuration")
{
    ports()->addPort(&ptime_port);
    ports()->addPort(&timeDuration_port);
}
 
Send::~Send()
{
}
 
bool Send::startHook()
{
    // just set last to now
    lastNow            = boost::posix_time::microsec_clock::local_time();
    return true;
}
 
void Send::updateHook()
{
    boost::posix_time::ptime            now;
    boost::posix_time::time_duration    delta;
 
    // send the current time, and the duration since the last updateHook()
    now        = boost::posix_time::microsec_clock::local_time();
    delta   = now - lastNow;
 
    ptime_port.Set(now);
    timeDuration_port.Set(delta);
 
    lastNow = now;
}

The recv component has the same ports but does nothing. It is simply an empty receiver component, that allows us to view its ports within the deployer.

class Recv : public RTT::TaskContext
{
public:
    RTT::DataPort<boost::posix_time::ptime>                ptime_port;
    RTT::DataPort<boost::posix_time::time_duration>        timeDuration_port;
 
public:
    Recv(std::string name);
    virtual ~Recv();
};

And the recv implementation.

#include "recv.hpp"
 
Recv::Recv(std::string name) :
        RTT::TaskContext(name),
        ptime_port("ptime"),
        timeDuration_port("timeDuration")
{
    ports()->addPort(&ptime_port);
    ports()->addPort(&timeDuration_port);
}
 
Recv::~Recv()
{
}

Now the combined test program just combines one of each test component directly within the same executable.

#include <rtt/RTT.hpp>
#include <rtt/PeriodicActivity.hpp>
#include <rtt/TaskContext.hpp>
#include <rtt/os/main.h>
#include <rtt/Ports.hpp>
#include <ocl/TaskBrowser.hpp>
 
#include "send.hpp"
#include "recv.hpp"
#include "../BoostToolkit.hpp"
 
using namespace std;
using namespace Orocos;
 
int ORO_main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    RTT::Toolkit::Import(Examples::BoostToolkit);
This forcibly loads our toolkit plugin.

 
    Recv                recv("Recv");
    PeriodicActivity    recv_activity(ORO_SCHED_OTHER, 0, 0.1, recv.engine());
    Send                 send("Send");
    PeriodicActivity    send_activity(ORO_SCHED_OTHER, 0, 0.2, send.engine());
 
    if ( connectPeers( &send, &recv ) == false )
    {
        log(Error) << "Could not connect peers !"<<endlog();
        return -1;
    }
    if ( connectPorts( &send, &recv) == false )
    {
        log(Error) << "Could not connect ports !"<<endlog();
        return -1;
    }
Connect the ports of the two components, and makes them peers

    send.configure();
    recv.configure();
    send_activity.start();
    recv_activity.start();
 
    TaskBrowser browser( &recv );
    browser.setColorTheme( TaskBrowser::whitebg );
    browser.loop();
Configures and starts both compents, and then runs an OCL::TaskBrowser over the receive component.

    send_activity.stop();
    recv_activity.stop();
 
    return 0;
}
Stops and exits cleanly.

The differences between the combined and no-toolkit test programs will be covered in Part 2, but essentially amounts to not loading the toolkit.

Part 3 Transport plugin will build a transport plugin allowing Orocos to communicate these types across CORBA.

Part 3 Transport plugin

'This is a work in progress''

This part builds a transport plugin allowing Orocos to communicate these types across CORBA.

Files

See the attachments at the bottom of Developing plugins and toolkits

To build

In a shell

cd /path/to/plugins
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DOROCOS_TARGET=macosx -DENABLE_CORBA=ON
make

The only difference from building in Part 1, is to turn ON CORBA.

For other operating systems substitute the appopriate value for "macosx" when setting OROCOS_TARGET (e.g. "gnulinux").

Tested in Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7.

To run

In a shell

cd /path/to/plugins/build/corba/tests
./corba-recv

In a second shell

cd /path/to/plugins/build/corba/tests
./corba-send

Now the same exact two test components of Parts 1 and 2 are in separate processes. Typing ls in either process will present the same values (subject to network latency delays, which typically are not human perceptible) - the data and types are now being communicated between deployers.

Now, the transport plugin is responsible for communicating the types between deployers, while the toolkit plugin is responsible for knowing each type and being able to display it. Separate responsibilities. Separate plugins.

NB for the example components, send must be started after recv. Starting only corba-recv and issuing ls will display the default values for each type. Also, quitting the send component and then attempting to use the recv component will lockup the recv deployer. These limitations are not due to the plugins - they are simply due to the limited functionality of these test cases.

Without the transport plugin

Running the same two corba test programs but without loading the transport plugin, is instructive as to what happens when you do not match up certain things in the toolkit sources. This is very important!

In a shell

cd /path/to/plugins/build/corba/tests
./corba-recv-no-toolkit
An ls in the recv component now gives
 Data Flow Ports: 
 RW(U) boost_ptime ptime          = not-a-date-time
 RW(U) boost_timeduration timeDuration   = 00:00:00
This is expected, as we have not connected the send component yet and so recv has default values.

In a second shell

cd /path/to/plugins/build/corba/tests
./corba-send-no-toolkit

The send component without the transport plugin fails to start, with:

$ ./build/corba/tests/corba-send-no-toolkit 
0.008 [ Warning][./build/corba/tests/corba-send-no-toolkit::main()] Forcing priority (0) of thread to 0.
0.008 [ Warning][PeriodicThread] Forcing priority (0) of thread to 0.
0.027 [ Warning][SingleThread] Forcing priority (0) of thread to 0.
5.078 [ Warning][./build/corba/tests/corba-send-no-toolkit::main()] ControlTask 'Send' already bound \
to CORBA Naming Service.
5.078 [ Warning][./build/corba/tests/corba-send-no-toolkit::main()] Trying to rebind... done. New \
ControlTask bound to Naming Service.
5.130 [ Warning][./build/corba/tests/corba-send-no-toolkit::main()] Can not create a proxy for data \
connection.
5.130 [ ERROR  ][./build/corba/tests/corba-send-no-toolkit::main()] Dynamic cast failed \
for 'PN3RTT14DataSourceBaseE', 'unknown_t', 'unknown_t'. Do your typenames not match?
Assertion failed: (doi && "Dynamic cast failed! See log file for details."), function createConnection, \
file /opt/install/include/rtt/DataPort.hpp, line 462.
Abort trap
The culprit here is that we tried to pass unknown types through CORBA. While the toolkit plugin tells Orocos about a type, it takes a transport plugin to tell Orocos how to communicate the type. The above failure indicates that Orocos came across a type named unknown_t and did not know how to deal with it. We will cover this more later in the tutorial, and specifically where and why this occurs. As a matter of interest, comparing the sources of corba/tests/corba-recv.cpp and corba/tests/corba-recv-no-toolkit.cpp, the differences are
*** corba/tests/corba-recv.cpp    2009-07-29 22:08:32.000000000 -0400
--- corba/tests/corba-recv-no-toolkit.cpp    2009-08-09 16:32:03.000000000 -0400
***************
*** 11,17 ****
  #include <rtt/os/main.h>
  #include <rtt/Ports.hpp>
 
- #include "../BoostCorbaToolkit.hpp"
  #include "../../BoostToolkit.hpp"
 
  // use Boost RTT Toolkit test components
--- 11,16 ----
***************
*** 27,33 ****
  int ORO_main(int argc, char* argv[])
  {
      RTT::Toolkit::Import( Examples::BoostToolkit  );
-     RTT::Toolkit::Import( Examples::Corba::corbaBoostPlugin  );
 
      Recv                recv("Recv");
      PeriodicActivity    recv_activity(
--- 26,31 ----
We simply did not load the transport plugin.

Transport plugin

The transport plugin implementation spans three files. We will cover them in turn

Defining CORBA types

We define the CORBA types in corba/BoostTypes.idl. This is a file in CORBA's Interface Description Language (IDL). There are plenty of references on the web, for instance [1].

// must be in RTT namespace to match some rtt/corba code
module RTT {
module Corba {
These structures must be in the RTT::Corba namespace.

    struct time_duration
    {
        short    hours;
        short    minutes;
        short    seconds;
        long    nanoseconds;
    };
We send a time duration as individual time components. Note that we avoid boost's fraction_secionds fiasco, and always send nanoseconds even if the sender or receiver implementations only support microseconds.

    // can't get at underlying type, so send this way (yes, more overhead)
    // see BoostCorbaConversion.hpp::struct AnyConversion<boost::posix_time::ptime>
    // for further details.
    struct ptime
    {
        // julian day
        long            date;    
        time_duration    time_of_day;
    };
};
};
I was not able to find a way to get to the native 64 or 96 bits that define a ptime value. Consequently, we inefficiently send a ptime as a julian day and a time duration within the day. Adequate for an example, but definitely more data than we would like to send.

Note that CORBA IDL knows about certain types already, e.g. short and long, and that we can use our time_duration structure in later structures.

We will come back to this IDL file during the build process.

The transport plugin

The actual plugin is defined in corba/BoostCorbaToolkit.hpp. This is the equivalent of the BoostToolkit.hpp file, except for a transport plugin.

namespace Examples {
namespace Corba {
 
    class CorbaBoostPlugin : public RTT::TransportPlugin
    {
    public:
        /// register this transport into the RTT type system
        bool registerTransport(std::string name, RTT::TypeInfo* ti);
 
        /// return the name of this transport type (ie "CORBA")
        std::string getTransportName() const;
 
        /// return the name of this transport
        std::string getName() const;
    };
 
    // the global instance
    extern CorbaBoostPlugin     corbaBoostPlugin;
 
// namespace
}
}
The transport plugin provides its name, the name of its transport mechanism, and a function to register the transport into Orocos. Note that no types are mentioned here as that is taken care of by the toolkit plugin. A transport plugin without a corresponding toolkit plugin is useless. Orocos will not know about the types and hence will not even make it to looking up transports for a given type.

The implementation of the plugin is in corba/BoostCorbaToolkit.cpp, and is very straight forward.

namespace Examples {
namespace Corba {
 
bool CorbaBoostPlugin::registerTransport(std::string name, TypeInfo* ti)
{
    assert( name == ti->getTypeName() );
    // name must match that in plugin::loadTypes() and 
    // typeInfo::composeTypeInfo(), etc
    if ( name == "boost_ptime" )
        return ti->addProtocol(ORO_CORBA_PROTOCOL_ID, new CorbaTemplateProtocol< boost::posix_time::ptime >() );
    if ( name == "boost_timeduration" )
        return ti->addProtocol(ORO_CORBA_PROTOCOL_ID, new CorbaTemplateProtocol< boost::posix_time::time_duration >() );
    return false;
}
Registering a transport registers each type for a given transport protocol (the ORO_CORBA_PROTOCOL_ID above, defined in rtt/src/corba/CorbaLib.hpp). Each type of transport must have a unique protocol ID, though currently Orocos only supports one, CORBA. Registration occurs automatically when the transport is loaded.

std::string CorbaBoostPlugin::getTransportName() const {
    return "CORBA";
}
 
std::string CorbaBoostPlugin::getName() const {
    return "CorbaBoost";
}
The plugin's name is CorbaBoost, and must be unique within all plugins (transport and toolkit, I believe). We choose to prefix the name of our toolkit plugin with Corba, to keep them recognizable.

For a CORBA transport plugin, the name returned by getTransportName() should be CORBA.

CorbaBoostPlugin corbaBoostPlugin;
 
// namespace
}
}
 
ORO_TOOLKIT_PLUGIN(Examples::Corba::corbaBoostPlugin);
Finally, the plugin itself is instantiated, and the appropriate macro is used so that Orocos can identify this as a plugin when loading it from a dynamic library.
 

Converting types

I will only cover the code for converting one of the types. The other is very similar - you can examine it yourself in the source file.

#include "BoostTypesC.h"
#include <rtt/corba/CorbaConversion.hpp>
#include <boost/date_time/posix_time/posix_time_types.hpp>  // no I/O
Here we pick up some standard RTT types, and the I/O operators for our custom boost types. We also pick up BoostTypesC.h. This is a file that CORBA generates from our BoostTypes.idl file above, and contains CORBA-specific code. Ignore its contents, but just realise that it is generated from the .idl file.

// must be in RTT namespace to match some rtt/corba code
namespace RTT
{
For some historical reason, I believe this has to be in the RTT namespace. Not sure if that is still true, but ... maybe it is to match the generated output from the .idl file?

template<>
struct AnyConversion< boost::posix_time::time_duration >
{
    // define the Corba and standard (ie non-Corba) types we are using
    typedef Corba::time_duration                CorbaType;
    typedef boost::posix_time::time_duration    StdType;
Here we define some shorthand types, to make typing easier. I also find that having these two types names this way, Corba vs Std, makes it easier to read some of the later code. The actual Corba::timer_duration type comes from the files generated from our .idl file.

The last four of the following six functions are required by the CORBA library, to enable conversion between the CORBA and non-CORBA types. The two convert functions are their for convenience, and to save replicating code.

    // convert CorbaType to StdTypes
    static void convert(const CorbaType& orig, StdType& ret) 
    {
        ret = boost::posix_time::time_duration(orig.hours,
                                               orig.minutes,
                                               orig.seconds,
                                               orig.nanoseconds);
    }
 
    // convert StdType to CorbaTypes
    static void convert(const StdType& orig, CorbaType& ret) 
    {
        ret.hours       = orig.hours();
        ret.minutes     = orig.minutes();
        ret.seconds     = orig.seconds();
        ret.nanoseconds = orig.fractional_seconds();
    }
The above two functions do the actual work of converting data to/from the CORBA and standard types. In this case we can basically copy individual data members - more complicated types may require further conversions, manipulation, etc.

    static CorbaType* toAny(const StdType& orig) {
        CorbaType* ret = new CorbaType();
        convert(orig, *ret);
        return ret;
    }
 
    static StdType get(const CorbaType* orig) {
        StdType ret;
        convert(*orig, ret);
        return ret;
    }
 
    static bool update(const CORBA::Any& any, StdType& ret) {
        CorbaType* orig;
        if ( any >>= orig ) 
        {
            convert(*orig, ret);
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
 
    static CORBA::Any_ptr createAny( const StdType& t ) {
        CORBA::Any_ptr ret = new CORBA::Any();
        *ret <<= toAny( t );
        return ret;
    }
};
The above four functions are, as previously mentioned, the standard interface to convert types to/from CORBA types. While the syntax might appear a little strange to you (e.g "<<=" operator), you can just copy the above to your own custom types (I copy these between transport plugins, an advantage of creating CORBA and standard types at top). Note well the one dynamic allocation in the toAny() function: transport plugins are most definitely not real-time capable.

The same six functions then follow for our boost::ptime type. They are not covered in detail here.

Build system

IF (ENABLE_CORBA)
 
  INCLUDE(${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/config/UseCorba.cmake)
This include ensures we know about the CORBA library, and also picks up some CMake macros we need.

  FILE( GLOB IDLS [^.]*.idl )
  FILE( GLOB CPPS [^.]*.cpp )
  ORO_ADD_CORBA_SERVERS(CPPS HPPS ${IDLS} )
The ORO_ADD_CORBA_SERVERS CMake macro we go from UseCorba.cmake, takes a list of source files (CPPS), a list of header files (HPPS - we have none here) and a list of interface description files (IDLS), and creates the necessary CMake code to generate the CORBA files from the IDL files. Basically, this takes our BoostTypes.idl file and produces header and source files to deal with that CORBA type. Note that this macro appends to the existing files listed in CPPS and HPPS - we'll need them shortly.

  INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES( ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/. )
We now have our own source files in the source directory, as well as source files generated into the build directory. This ensures we can pick up the source files from the build directory as well.

  CREATE_COMPONENT(BoostToolkit-corba-${OROCOS_TARGET} 
    VERSION 1.0.0
    ${CPPS})
  TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(BoostToolkit-corba-${OROCOS_TARGET}     
    ${OROCOS-RTT_CORBA_LIBRARIES}
    ${CORBA_LIBRARIES})
Here we create a componet shared library, that contains only the transport plugins. Note that the library contains all the source files in the CPPS CMake variable, which now contains all the .cpp files in this directory (due to the "FILE(GLOB ...) statement) as well as the source files generated from the ORO_ADD_CORBA_SERVERS macro. These make up our transport toolkit. Fundamentally, the transport toolkit shared library is no different than a shared library of standard components, except for a tiny bit of C++ code that comes out of the ORO_TOOLKIT_PLUGIN() macro at the end of the BoostCorbaToolkit.cpp'' file. RTT then recognizes this shared library as containing a transport plugin.

  SUBDIRS(tests)
 
ENDIF (ENABLE_CORBA)
And lastly, pick up the tests.

Tests

The corba test programs contain one component each, to distribute the two components and hence require the CORBA transport plugin. The exact same send and receive test components are used from Part 2.

The corba-send test program instantiates a send component, and uses an RTT ControlTaskProxy to represent the remote receive component.

#include <rtt/corba/ControlTaskServer.hpp>
#include <rtt/corba/ControlTaskProxy.hpp>
#include <rtt/RTT.hpp>
#include <rtt/PeriodicActivity.hpp>
#include <rtt/TaskContext.hpp>
#include <rtt/os/main.h>
#include <rtt/Ports.hpp>
#include <ocl/TaskBrowser.hpp>
 
#include "../BoostCorbaToolkit.hpp"
#include "../../BoostToolkit.hpp"
 
#include "../../tests/send.hpp"
 
using namespace std;
using namespace Orocos;
using namespace RTT::Corba;
 
int ORO_main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    RTT::Toolkit::Import( Examples::BoostToolkit  );
    RTT::Toolkit::Import( Examples::Corba::corbaBoostPlugin  );
Import both the toolkit and transport plugins.

    Send                send("Send");
    PeriodicActivity    send_activity(
        ORO_SCHED_OTHER, 0, 1.0 / 10, send.engine());   // 10 Hz
 
    // start Corba and find the remote task
    ControlTaskProxy::InitOrb(argc, argv);
    ControlTaskServer::ThreadOrb();
Initialize the CORBA Orb, and then thread it (yes, this does use Proxy and Server functions - this is ok). This puts the CORBA Orb in a background thread, allowing us to run the taskbrowser (below) in the main thread.

    TaskContext* recv = ControlTaskProxy::Create( "Recv" );
    assert(NULL != recv);
Creates a proxy task context for a remote component named "Recv". This will use the name service (by default) to find this component.

    if ( connectPeers( recv, &send ) == false )
    {
        log(Error) << "Could not connect peers !"<<endlog();
    }
    // create data object at recv's side
    if ( connectPorts( recv, &send) == false )
    {
        log(Error) << "Could not connect ports !"<<endlog();
    }
Connect the local send component to the proxy recv component.

    send.configure();
    send_activity.start();
    log(Info) << "Starting task browser" << endlog();
    OCL::TaskBrowser tb( recv );
    tb.loop();
    send_activity.stop();
Start a task browser on the proxy component. We are, after all, interested in the reception of the data. You could have instead run the taskbrowser on the send component.

    ControlTaskProxy::DestroyOrb();
 
    return 0;
}
Cleanly shutdown the orb and exit.

The receive test program has a similar structure to the send test program.

#include <rtt/corba/ControlTaskServer.hpp>
#include <rtt/corba/ControlTaskProxy.hpp>
#include <rtt/RTT.hpp>
#include <rtt/PeriodicActivity.hpp>
#include <rtt/TaskContext.hpp>
#include <rtt/os/main.h>
#include <rtt/Ports.hpp>
 
#include "../BoostCorbaToolkit.hpp"
#include "../../BoostToolkit.hpp"
 
#include "../../tests/recv.hpp"
 
#include <ocl/TaskBrowser.hpp>
 
using namespace std;
using namespace Orocos;
using namespace RTT::Corba;
 
 
int ORO_main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    RTT::Toolkit::Import( Examples::BoostToolkit  );
    RTT::Toolkit::Import( Examples::Corba::corbaBoostPlugin  );
 
    Recv                recv("Recv");
    PeriodicActivity    recv_activity(
        ORO_SCHED_OTHER, 0, 1.0 / 5, recv.engine());    // 5 Hz
 
    // Setup Corba and Export:
    ControlTaskServer::InitOrb(argc, argv);
    ControlTaskServer::Create( &recv );
    ControlTaskServer::ThreadOrb();
We make the receive component a CORBA server, meaning that the send component will connect to this component. It could have been done the other way around - in this example, it simply impacts which test program has to be started first (the server must be running for the client to connect to it). Again we thread the ORB to put it in its own background thread.

    // Wait for requests:
    recv.configure();
    recv_activity.start();
    OCL::TaskBrowser tb( &recv );
    tb.loop();
    recv_activity.stop();
Run the taskbrowser on the recieve component (in the main thread). Note that the send component is not mentioned anywhere. The "server" does not know about any "clients", but the "clients" do need to know about the server.

    // Cleanup Corba:
    ControlTaskServer::ShutdownOrb();
    ControlTaskServer::DestroyOrb();
 
    return 0;
}
Cleanly shutdown and destroy the CORBA Orb and exit.

The no-toolkit versions of the test programs are identical, except they simply do not load the transport plugin, making it impossible to transport the boost types over CORBA.

References

[1] http://www.iona.com/support/docs/manuals/orbix/33/html/orbix33cxx_pguide/IDL.html

Experienced Users

Now located at http://orocos.org/wiki/rtt/examples-and-tutorials

Name connections, not ports (aka Orocos' best kept secret)

Rationale

Problem: How to reuse a component when you need the ports to have different names?

Solution: Name the connection between ports in the deployer. This essentially allows you to rename ports. Unfortunately, this extremely useful feature is not documented anywhere (as of July, 2009). <!-- break -->

Assumptions

  • The build directory is within the source directory. Click below to read the rest of this post.== Rationale ==

Problem: How to reuse a component when you need the ports to have different names?

Solution: Name the connection between ports in the deployer. This essentially allows you to rename ports. Unfortunately, this extremely useful feature is not documented anywhere (as of July, 2009). <!-- break -->

Assumptions

  • The build directory is within the source directory. This helps with dynamic library loading.
  • Admittedly, this is contrived example but the structure is very useful and occurs more frequently than you may realise (say using N copies of a camera component, deploying components for both a left and a right robot arm within the same deployer, etc).

Files

HMI.hpp

Robot.hpp

OneAxisFilter.hpp

HMI.cpp

Robot.cpp

OneAxisFilter.cpp

Connect-1.xml

Connect-2.xml

Connect-3.xml

Buildable tarball

Example overview

This example occurs in three parts

  1. A Human-Machine-Interface (HMI) component connects to a Robot component, and provides a desired cartesian position.
  2. A one-axis filter is placed between the HMI and Robot component, to zero out one axis (say, you did not want the robot to move in one direction due to an obstacle or something similar)
  3. A second one-axis filter is placed between the first filter and the Robot. The two filters are the exact same component with the same named ports.

Components

class HMI : public RTT::TaskContext
{
protected:
    // *** OUTPUTS ***
 
    /// desired cartesian position
    RTT::WriteDataPort<KDL::Frame>            cartesianPosition_desi_port;
 
public:
    HMI(std::string name);
    virtual ~HMI();
 
protected:
    /// set the desired cartesian position to an initial value
    /// \return true
    virtual bool startHook();
};
The HMI provides one output port that specified the desired cartesian position. This is set to an initial value in startHook().

class Robot : public RTT::TaskContext
{
protected:
    // *** INPUTS ***
 
    /// desired cartesian position
    RTT::ReadDataPort<KDL::Frame>            cartesianPosition_desi_port;
 
public:
    Robot(std::string name);
    virtual ~Robot();
};
The robot accepts a desired cartesian position as input (but in this example does nothing with it).

class OneAxisFilter : public RTT::TaskContext
{
protected:
    // *** INPUTS ***
 
    /// desired cartesian position
    RTT::ReadDataPort<KDL::Frame>            inputPosition_port;
 
    // *** OUTPUTS ***
 
    /// desired cartesian position
    RTT::WriteDataPort<KDL::Frame>            outputPosition_port;
 
    // *** CONFIGURATION ***
 
    /// specify which axis to filter (should be one of "x", "y", or "z")
    RTT::Property<std::string>                axis_prop;
 
public:
    OneAxisFilter(std::string name);
    virtual ~OneAxisFilter();
 
protected:
    /// validate axis_prop value
    /// \return true if axis_prop value is valid, otherwise false
    virtual bool configureHook();
    /// filter one translational axis (as specified by axis_prop)
    virtual void updateHook();
};
The OneAxisFilter component takes an input cartesian position, zeroes out one axis (the axis of interest is specified in a property), and then outputs the filtered cartesian position.

Component implementation

The component implementations are not given in this example, as they are not the interesting part of the solution, but are available in the Files section above.

The interesting part is in the deployment files ...

Deployment

Part 1: HMI and Robot

This part simply connects the HMI and robot together (see deployment file Connect-1.xml).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "cpf.dtd">
<properties>
 
  <simple name="Import" type="string">
    <value>liborocos-rtt</value>
  </simple>
  <simple name="Import" type="string">
    <value>liborocos-kdl</value>
  </simple>
  <simple name="Import" type="string">
    <value>liborocos-kdltk</value>
  </simple>
  <simple name="Import" type="string">
    <value>libConnectionNaming</value>
  </simple>
The first section of the deployment file simply loads the Orocos libaries we use (including the KDL toolkit, so that we can inspect and modify KDL types within the deployer), and then loads our shared libary (libConnectionNaming).

  <struct name="HMI" type="HMI">
    <struct name="Activity" type="PeriodicActivity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Ports" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="cartesianPosition_desi" type="string">
        <value>cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
    </struct> 
  </struct>
The next section creates an HMI component, with the connection for its output port named "cartesianPosition_desi" (ie the same as the port name). The syntax for port/connection naming is:

      <simple name="portName" type="string">
        <value>connectionName</value>
      </simple>
which makes port portName part of connection connectionName.

  <struct name="Robot" type="Robot">
    <struct name="Activity" type="PeriodicActivity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Peers" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple type="string"><value>HMI</value></simple>
    </struct> 
    <struct name="Ports" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="cartesianPosition_desi" type="string">
        <value>cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
    </struct> 
  </struct>
</properties>
Lastly, the robot component is created with its input port on a connection named cartesianPosition_desi.

Now, the deployer uses connection names when connecting components between peers, not port names. So it attempts to connect a Robot.cartesianPosition_desi connection to a Vehicle. cartesianPosition_desi connection (which in this part, matches the port names).

Build the library, and then run this part with

cd /path/to/ConnectionNaming/build
deployer-macosx -s ../Connect-1.xml

Examine the HMI and Robot components, and note that each has a connected port, and the port values match.

Part 2: HMI, one filter and a robot

This part adds a filter component between the HMI and the robot (see Connect-2.xml)

As with Part 1, the first part of the file loads the appropriate libraries (left out here, as it is identical to Part 1).

  <struct name="HMI" type="HMI">
    <struct name="Activity" type="PeriodicActivity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Ports" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="cartesianPosition_desi" type="string">
        <value>unfiltered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
    </struct> 
  </struct>
Again an HMI component is deployed, except this time the deployer will connect the cartesianPosition_desi port as part of a connection named unfiltered_cartesianPosition_desi.

  <struct name="Filter" type="OneAxisFilter">
    <struct name="Activity" type="PeriodicActivity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Peers" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple type="string"><value>HMI</value></simple>
    </struct> 
    <struct name="Ports" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="inputPosition" type="string">
        <value>unfiltered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
      <simple name="outputPosition" type="string">
        <value>filtered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
    </struct> 
    <simple name="PropertyFile" type="string">
      <value>../Filter1.cpf</value></simple>
  </struct>
The Filter component is deployed with its input port being part of a connection named unfiltered_cartesianPosition_desi, while its output port is part of a connection named filtered_cartesianPosition_desi. Comparison with the HMI port/connections above, and the Robot port/connections below, you can see that the Filter's input port is connected to the HMI and the output port is connected to the Robot.

  <struct name="Robot" type="Robot">
    <struct name="Activity" type="PeriodicActivity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Peers" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple type="string"><value>Filter</value></simple>
    </struct> 
    <struct name="Ports" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="cartesianPosition_desi" type="string">
        <value>filtered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
    </struct> 
  </struct>
The robot component is the same as Part 1, except that its input port is part of a connection named filtered_cartesianPosition_desi (ie connected to the Filter).

Run this part with

cd /path/to/ConnectionNaming/build
deployer-macosx -s ../Connect-2.xml

Examine all three components, and note that all ports are connected, and in particular, that the HMI and Filter.inputPosition ports match while the Filter.outputPosition and Vehicle ports match (ie they have the 'x' axis filtered out).

Using connection naming allows us to connect ports of different names. This is particularly useful with a generic component like this filter, as in one deployment it may connect to a component with ports named cartesianPosition_desi, while in another deployment it may connect to ports named CartDesiPos, or any other names. The filter component is now decoupled from the actual port names used to deploy it.

Part 3: HMI, two filters and a robot

This part adds a second filter between the first filter and the robot.

As with Parts 1 and 2, the libraries are loaded first.

  <struct name="HMI" type="HMI">
    <struct name="Activity" type="PeriodicActivity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Ports" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="cartesianPosition_desi" type="string">
        <value>unfiltered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
    </struct> 
  </struct>
There is no change in the HMI from Part 2.

  <struct name="Filter1" type="OneAxisFilter">
    <struct name="Activity" type="PeriodicActivity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Peers" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple type="string"><value>HMI</value></simple>
    </struct> 
    <struct name="Ports" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="inputPosition" type="string">
        <value>unfiltered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
      <simple name="outputPosition" type="string">
        <value>filtered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
    </struct> 
    <simple name="PropertyFile" type="string">
      <value>../Filter1.cpf</value></simple>
  </struct>
There is no change in the first filter from Part 2.

  <struct name="Filter2" type="OneAxisFilter">
    <struct name="Activity" type="PeriodicActivity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Peers" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple type="string"><value>HMI</value></simple>
    </struct> 
    <struct name="Ports" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="inputPosition" type="string">
        <value>filtered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
      <simple name="outputPosition" type="string">
        <value>double_filtered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
    </struct> 
    <simple name="PropertyFile" type="string">
      <value>../Filter2.cpf</value></simple>
  </struct>
The second filter has its input port part of a connection named filtered_cartesianPosition_desi (ie it is connected to Filter1's output port), and the second filter's output port is part of a connecton named double_filtered_cartesianPosition_desi (which as you will see, is connected to the robot's input port).

  <struct name="Robot" type="Robot">
    <struct name="Activity" type="PeriodicActivity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Peers" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple type="string"><value>Filter2</value></simple>
    </struct> 
    <struct name="Ports" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="cartesianPosition_desi" type="string">
        <value>double_filtered_cartesianPosition_desi</value></simple>
    </struct> 
  </struct>
The only change in the robot component, from Part 2, is to change its peer to Filter2 and to use a connection named double_filtered_cartesianPosition_desi (ie connect it to Filter2).

Run this part with

cd /path/to/ConnectionNaming/build
deployer-macosx -s ../Connect-3.xml

Examine all components, and note which ports are connected, and what their values are. Note that the vehicle has two axes knocked out (x and y).

Points to note

  1. WARNING The deployer displays port names for ports within components, while the OCL reporting component also uses port names. Only the act of connecting ports between peers when deploying a component network, makes use of the connection naming shown above.
  2. Using connection naming allows us to reuse a component without resorting to renaming its ports or modifying its code in any way. This is an example of deployment-time configuration. Note that there are certainly instances where run-time configuration of port-names may be needed (eg the component has to name its ports based on the component name itself), but in our experience, deployment-time configuration is more frequent and decouples components better.
  3. Note that as many filters as are required could be chained together in this manner, and that none of the input, output, nor filter components need know that they are connected in such a fashion. Decoupling is your friend, and allowed the Filter component writer to simply concentrate on writing a component that did one thing well: filtered a cartesian position (yes, a trivial example, but a valid point nonetheless).
  4. You may notice that the deployment files do not specify peer combinations in pairs. The peers are mentioned in one direction only. We use this to decouple (yet again) a component from knowing what peers it is connected to, where possible. For example, Filter1 in both Parts 2 and 3 does not now what component is down-stream from it. It doesn't know, nor does it care, whether it is being filtered again, connected to a robot, or whatever. Again, decoupling. This can dramatically help when deploying large systems.

To build

In a shell

cd /path/to/ConnectionNaming
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DOROCOS_TARGET=macosx
make

For other operating systems substitute the appopriate value for "macosx" when setting OROCOS_TARGET (e.g. "gnulinux").

Tested in Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7.

AttachmentSize
HMI.hpp2.16 KB
Robot.hpp1.99 KB
OneAxisFilter.hpp2.52 KB
HMI.cpp2.04 KB
Robot.cpp1.94 KB
OneAxisFilter.cpp2.92 KB
Connect-1.xml1.96 KB
Connect-2.xml2.91 KB
Connect-3.xml3.85 KB
connectionNaming.tar_.bz27.01 KB

Simple Examples

Now located at http://orocos.org/wiki/rtt/examples-and-tutorials

Simple TCP client using non-periodic component

Rationale

Problem: You want a component that connects to a remote TCP server, and reads data from it (this example could easily write, instead of reading). This component will block for varying amounts of time when reading.

Solution: Use a non-periodic component. This example outlines one method to structure the component, to deal with the non-blocking reads while still being responsive to other components, being able to run a state machine, etc.

<!-- break -->

Assumptions

  • Uses Qt sockets to avoid operating-system intracacies and differences when using actual sockets. The code can easily be modified to use bind(), accept(), listen(), etc. instead. It is the structure of the solution that we are interested in.
  • The build directory is within the source directory. This helps with dynamic library loading.
  • Does not attempt reconnection if unable connect on first attempt.
  • Non-robust error handling.
  • Does not validate property values (a robust component would validate that the timeouts were valid, eg. not negative, within a configureHook()).

Files

SimpleNonPeriodicClient.cpp

SimpleNonPeriodicClient.hpp

SimpleNonPeriodicClient.xml

SimpleNonPeriodicClient.cpf

Buildable tarball

The .cpf file has a .txt extension simply to keep the wiki happy. To use the file, rename it to SimpleNonPeriodicClient.cpf.

Component definition

This is the class definition

class SimpleNonPeriodicClient : public RTT::TaskContext
{
protected:
    // DATA INTERFACE
 
    // *** OUTPUTS ***
 
    /// the last read data
    RTT::WriteDataPort<std::string>            lastRead_port;
 
    /// the number of items sucessfully read
    RTT::Attribute<int>                        countRead_attr;
 
    // *** CONFIGURATION ***
 
    // name to listen for incoming connections on, either FQDN or IPv4 addres
    RTT::Property<std::string>                hostName_prop;
    // port to listen on
    RTT::Property<int>                        hostPort_prop;
    // timeout in seconds, when waiting for connection
    RTT::Property<int>                        connectionTimeout_prop;
    // timeout in seconds, when waiting to read
    RTT::Property<int>                        readTimeout_prop;
 
public:
    SimpleNonPeriodicClient(std::string name);
    virtual ~SimpleNonPeriodicClient();
 
protected:
    /// reset count and lastRead, attempt to connect to remote
    virtual bool startHook();
    /// attempt to read and process one packet
    virtual void updateHook();
    /// close the socket and cleanup
    virtual void stopHook();
    /// cause updateHook() to return
    virtual bool breakUpdateHook();
 
    /// Socket used to connect to remote host
    QTcpSocket*    socket;
    /// Flag indicating to updateHook() that we want to quit
    bool        quit;
};

The component has a series of properties specifying the remote host and port to connect to, as well as timeout parameters. It also uses an RTT Attribute to count the number of successful reads that have occurred, and stores the last read data as a string in a RTT data port.

Component implementation

#include "SimpleNonPeriodicClient.hpp"
#include <rtt/Logger.hpp>
#include <ocl/ComponentLoader.hpp>
 
#include <QTcpSocket>

The class definition is included as well as the RTT logger, and importantly, the OCL component loader that turns this class into a deployable componet in a shared library.

Most importantly, all Qt related headers come after all Orocos headers. This is required as Qt redefines certain words (eg "slot", "emit") which when used in our or Orocos code cause compilation errors.

SimpleNonPeriodicClient::SimpleNonPeriodicClient(std::string name) :
        RTT::TaskContext(name),
        lastRead_port("lastRead", ""),
        countRead_attr("countRead", 0),
        hostName_prop("HostName", 
                      "Name to listen for incoming connections on (FQDN or IPv4)", ""),
        hostPort_prop("HostPort", 
                      "Port to listen on (1024-65535 inclusive)", 0),
        connectionTimeout_prop("ConnectionTimeout", 
                               "Timeout in seconds, when waiting for connection", 0),
        readTimeout_prop("ReadTimeout", 
                         "Timeout in seconds, when waiting for read", 0),
        socket(new QTcpSocket), 
        quit(false)
{
    ports()->addPort(&lastRead_port);
 
    attributes()->addAttribute(&countRead_attr);
 
    properties()->addProperty(&hostName_prop);
    properties()->addProperty(&hostPort_prop);
    properties()->addProperty(&connectionTimeout_prop);
    properties()->addProperty(&readTimeout_prop);
}

The constuctor simply sets up the data interface elements (ie the port, attribute and properties), and gives them appropriate initial values. Note that some of these initial values are illegal, which would aid in any validation code in a configureHook() (which has not been done in this example).

SimpleNonPeriodicClient::~SimpleNonPeriodicClient()
{
    delete socket;
}

The destructor cleans up by deleting the socket we allocated in the constructor.

Now to the meat of it

bool SimpleNonPeriodicClient::startHook()
{
    bool        rc                    = false;        // prove otherwise
    std::string    hostName            = hostName_prop.rvalue();
    int            hostPort            = hostPort_prop.rvalue();
    int         connectionTimeout    = connectionTimeout_prop.rvalue();
 
    quit = false;
 
    // attempt to connect to remote host/port
    log(Info) << "Connecting to " << hostName << ":" << hostPort << endlog();
    socket->connectToHost(hostName.c_str(), hostPort);
    if (socket->waitForConnected(1000 * connectionTimeout))    // to millseconds
    {
        log(Info) << "Connected" << endlog();
        rc = true;
    }
    else
    {    
        log(Error) << "Error connecting: " << socket->error() << ", " 
                   << socket->errorString().toStdString() << endlog();
        // as we now return false, this component will fail to start.
    }
 
    return rc;
}
The startHook() uses the properites loaded from the SimpleNonPeriodicClient.cpf file, to attempt to connect to the remote host. If the remote port is not ready, the attempted connection will timeout.

If the connection does not occur successfully, then startHook() will return false which prevents the component from actually being started. No reconnection is attempted (see Assumptions above)

void SimpleNonPeriodicClient::updateHook()
{
    // wait for some data to arrive, timing out if necessary
    int     readTimeout        = readTimeout_prop.rvalue();
    log(Debug) << "Waiting for data with timeout=" << readTimeout << " seconds" << endlog();
    if (!socket->waitForReadyRead(1000 * readTimeout))
    {
        log(Error) << "Error waiting for data: " << socket->error() << ", " 
                   << socket->errorString().toStdString() 
                   << ". Num bytes = " 
                   << socket->bytesAvailable() << endlog();
        log(Error) << "Disconnecting" << endlog();
        // disconnect socket, and do NOT call this function again
        // ie no engine()->getActivity()->trigger()
        socket->disconnectFromHost();
        return;        
    }
 
    // read and print whatever data is available, but stop if instructed
    // to quit
    while (!quit && (0 < socket->bytesAvailable()))
    {
#define    BUFSIZE        10
        char            str[BUFSIZE + 1];    // +1 for terminator
        qint64            numRead;
 
        numRead = socket->read((char*)&str[0], 
                               min(BUFSIZE, socket->bytesAvailable()));
        str[BUFSIZE] = '\0';        // forcibly terminate
        if (0 < numRead)
        {
            log(Info) << "Got " << numRead << " bytes : '" << &str[0] << "'" << endlog();
            countRead_attr.set(countRead_attr.get() + 1);
            lastRead_port.Set(&str[0]);
        }
    }
 
    // if not quitting then trigger another immediate call to this function, to
    // get the next batch of data
    if (!quit)
    {
        engine()->getActivity()->trigger();
    }
}

The updateHook() function attempts to wait until data is available, and then reads the data BUFSIZE characters at a time. If it times out waiting for data, then it errors out and disconnects the port. This is not a robust approach and a real algorithm would deal with this differently.

As data may be continually arriving and/or we get more than BUFSIZE characters at a time, the while loop may iterate several times. The quit flag will indicate if the user wants to stop the component, and that we should stop reading characters.

Of particular note is the last line

engine()->getActivity()->trigger();
This causes updateHook() to be called again immediately by the execution engine. Essentially, this makes the non-periodic component act as a periodic component with a varying period. Of course, this is not called if the component is being stopped (ie quit==true).

void SimpleNonPeriodicClient::stopHook()
{
    if (socket->isValid() &&
        (QAbstractSocket::ConnectedState == socket->state()))
    {
        log(Info) << "Disconnecting" << endlog();
        socket->disconnectFromHost();
    }
}
The stopHook() simply disconnects the socket if it is currently connected.

bool SimpleNonPeriodicClient::breakUpdateHook()
{
    quit = true;
    return true;
}
The breakUpdateHook() is very important, as it is the only way to inform a blocked updateHook() that it is time to return and quit. In this example we set the quit flag and return true. The quit flag will be picked up by updateHook() when it finishes waiting for data (in socket->waitForReadyRead()). Returning true from breakUpdateHook() tells the execution engine that we successfully told updateHook() to return and that it should wait (one second, hardcoded) for updateHook() to complete and return. If we returned false, then stop would also return false.

We could have also done something like socket->abort() to forcibly terminate any blocked socket->waitForReadyRead() calls.

When using system calls (e.g. read() ) instead of Qt classes you could attempt to send a signal to interrupt the system call, however, this might not have the desired effect when the component is deployed ... the reader is advised to be careful here.

ORO_CREATE_COMPONENT(SimpleNonPeriodicClient)
This line of code creates a deployable component for the SimpleNonPeriodicClient) class, that the deployer can load from a shared library.

To build

In a shell

cd /path/to/SimpleNonPeriodicClient
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DOROCOS_TARGET=macosx
make

For other operating systems substitute the appopriate value for "macosx" when setting OROCOS_TARGET (e.g. "gnulinux").

Tested in Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.7, and Ubuntu Jaunty Linux.

To run

Start one shell and run netcat to act as the server (NB 50001 is the HostPort value from your SimpleNonPeriodicClient.cpf file)

nc -l 50001

Start a second shell and deploy the SimpleNonPeriodicClient component

cd /path/to/SimpleNonPeriodicClient/build
deployer-macosx -s ../SimpleNonPeriodicClient.xml

Now type in the first shell and when you hit enter, then netcat will send the data and it will be printed by the SimpleNonPeriodicClient component (where N is the size of the buffer in updateHook()).

Points to note:

  1. The SimpleNonPeriodicClient component will time out if you do not hit enter within ReadTimeout seconds (as specified in the SimpleNonPeriodicClient.cpf file).
  2. Setting the ORO_LOGLEVEL environment variable to 5 or 6, or running the deployer with -linfo or -ldebugoptions, will generate additional debugging statements.
  3. The component will take up to ReadTimeout seconds to respond to the user typing quit in the deployer, as breakUpdateHook() does not forcibly exit the socket->waitForReadyRead() call.

AttachmentSize
SimpleNonPeriodicClient.cpp7.42 KB
SimpleNonPeriodicClient.hpp3.11 KB
SimpleNonPeriodicClient.xml1 KB
SimpleNonPeriodicClient-cpf.txt748 bytes
SimpleNonPeriodicClient.tar_.bz27.72 KB

Sample output

Sample output

The netcat shell, with the text the user typed in.

nc -l 50001 
The quick brown fox jumps
over the lazy dog. 

The deployer shell, showing the text read in chunks, as well as the updated port and attribute within the component.

deployer-macosx -s ../SimpleNonPeriodicClient.xml -linfo
0.009 [ Info   ][deployer-macosx::main()] No plugins present in /usr/lib/rtt/macosx/plugins
0.009 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::loadComponents] Loading '../SimpleNonPeriodicClient.xml'.
0.010 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::loadComponents] Validating new configuration...
0.011 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::loadLibrary] Storing orocos-rtt
0.011 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::loadLibrary] Loaded shared library 'liborocos-rtt-macosx.dylib'
0.054 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::loadLibrary] Loaded multi component library 'libSimpleNonPeriodicClient.dylib'
0.054 [ Warning][DeploymentComponent::loadLibrary] Component type name SimpleNonPeriodicClient already used: overriding.
0.054 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::loadLibrary] Loaded component type 'SimpleNonPeriodicClient'
0.055 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::loadLibrary] Storing SimpleNonPeriodicClient
0.058 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::loadComponent] Adding SimpleNonPeriodicClient as new peer:  OK.
0.058 [ Warning][SingleThread] Forcing priority (0) of thread to 0.
0.058 [ Info   ][NonPeriodicActivity] SingleThread created with priority 0 and period 0.
0.058 [ Info   ][NonPeriodicActivity] Scheduler type was set to `4'.
0.059 [ Info   ][PropertyLoader:configure] Configuring TaskContext 'SimpleNonPeriodicClient' with '../SimpleNonPeriodicClient.cpf'.
0.059 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::configureComponents] Configured Properties of SimpleNonPeriodicClient from ../SimpleNonPeriodicClient.cpf
0.059 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::configureComponents] Re-setting activity of SimpleNonPeriodicClient
0.059 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::configureComponents] Configuration successful.
0.060 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::startComponents] Connecting to 127.0.0.1:50001
0.064 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::startComponents] Connected
0.065 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::startComponents] Startup successful.
0.065 [ Info   ][deployer-macosx::main()] Successfully loaded, configured and started components from ../SimpleNonPeriodicClient.xml
   Switched to : Deployer
0.066 [ Info   ][SimpleNonPeriodicClient] Entering Task Deployer
 
  This console reader allows you to browse and manipulate TaskContexts.
  You can type in a command, event, method, expression or change variables.
  (type 'help' for instructions)
    TAB completion and HISTORY is available ('bash' like)
 
 In Task Deployer[S]. (Status of last Command : none )
 (type 'ls' for context info) :4.816 [ Info   ][SimpleNonPeriodicClient] Got 10 bytes : 'The quick '
4.816 [ Info   ][SimpleNonPeriodicClient] Got 10 bytes : 'brown fox '
7.448 [ Info   ][SimpleNonPeriodicClient] Got 10 bytes : 'jumps
over'
7.448 [ Info   ][SimpleNonPeriodicClient] Got 10 bytes : ' the lazy '
12.448 [ ERROR  ][SimpleNonPeriodicClient] Error waiting for data: 5, Network operation timed out. Num bytes = 5
12.448 [ ERROR  ][SimpleNonPeriodicClient] Disconnecting
 
 
 In Task Deployer[S]. (Status of last Command : none )
 (type 'ls' for context info) :ls SimpleNonPeriodicClient
 
 Listing TaskContext SimpleNonPeriodicClient :
 
 Configuration Properties: 
     string HostName       = 127.0.0.1            (Name to listen for incoming connections on (FQDN or IPv4))
        int HostPort       = 50001                (Port to listen on (1024-65535 inclusive))
        int ConnectionTimeout = 5                    (Timeout in seconds, when waiting for connection)
        int ReadTimeout    = 5                    (Timeout in seconds, when waiting for read)
 
 Execution Interface:
  Attributes   : 
        int countRead      = 4                   
 
  Methods      : activate cleanup configure error getErrorCount getPeriod getWarningCount inFatalError inRunTimeError inRunTimeWarning isActive isConfigured isRunning resetError start stop trigger update warning 
  Commands     : (none)
  Events       : (none)
 
 Data Flow Ports: 
  W(U)      string lastRead       =  the lazy 
 
 Task Objects: 
  this           ( The interface of this TaskContext. ) 
  scripting      ( Access to the Scripting interface. Use this object in order to load or query programs or state machines. ) 
  engine         ( Access to the Execution Engine. Use this object in order to address programs or state machines which may or may not be loaded. ) 
  marshalling    ( Read and write Properties to a file. ) 
  lastRead       ( (No description set for this Port) ) 
 
 Peers        : (none)
 
 In Task Deployer[S]. (Status of last Command : none )
 (type 'ls' for context info) :quit
 
18.089 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::stopComponents] Stopped SimpleNonPeriodicClient
18.089 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::cleanupComponents] Cleaned up SimpleNonPeriodicClient
18.090 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::startComponents] Disconnected and destroyed SimpleNonPeriodicClient
18.090 [ Info   ][DeploymentComponent::startComponents] Kick-out successful.
18.091 [ Info   ][Logger] Orocos Logging Deactivated.

Using XML substitution to manage complex deployments

Rationale

Problem: You deploy multiple configurations of your system, perhaps choosing between a real and simulated robot, some real and simulated device, etc. You want to parameterize the deployments to reduce the number of files you have to write for the varying configuration combinations

Solution: Use the XML ENTITY element.

Assumptions

  • Works with Xerces only (v2 tested, v3 should also support this). Will not work with the default TinyXML processor.

Compatabilitry

Tested on v1.x trunk on Mac OS X Snow Leopard. These instructions should apply identically to RTT 2.x installations.

Files

See the attachments at the bottom of this page.

Approach

This simple example demonstrates how to deploy a tiny system in two configurations, by simply changing the name of the deployed component. This approach can be (and has been) used to manage deployments with many system configurations.

There is a top-level file per configuration, which specifies all the parameters. Each top-level file then includes a child file which instantiates components, etc.

One top level file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "cpf.dtd"
[
  <!-- internal entities for substituion -->
  <!ENTITY name "Console">
  <!ENTITY lib "liborocos-rtt">
  <!-- external entity for file substitution -->
  <!ENTITY FILE_NAME SYSTEM "test-entity-child.xml">
]
>
 
<properties>
 
  &FILE_NAME;
 
</properties>

The internal entity values are used to substitute component names, and other basic parameters. The external entity value (&FILE_NAME) is used to include child files, so that the entity values defined in the top-level file are available within the child file. Using the Orocos' builtin include statement does not make the top-level entity values available within the child file.

The child file simply substitutes the two internal entities for a library name, and a component name.

<properties>
 
  <simple name="Import" type="string">
    <value>&lib;</value>
  </simple>
  <simple name="Import" type="string">
    <value>liborocos-ocl-common</value>
  </simple>
 
  <struct name="&name;" type="OCL::HMIConsoleOutput">
  </struct>
 
</properties>

The other top level file differs from the first top level file only in the name of the component.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "cpf.dtd"
[
  <!ENTITY name "Console2">
  <!ENTITY lib "liborocos-rtt">
  <!ENTITY file SYSTEM "test-entity-child.xml">
]
>
 
<properties>
 
  &file;
 
</properties>

You can use relative paths within the external entity filename. I have had inconsistent success with this - sometimes the relative path is needed, and other times it isn't. I think that it only needs the path relative to the file being included from, so if that file is already loaded on a relative path then you need to specify the child file only relative to the parent file, and not the current working directory that you started the deployment in.

AttachmentSize
test-entity.xml1.56 KB
test-entity2.xml278 bytes
test-entity-child.xml307 bytes

Using real-time logging

This page collects notes and issues on the use of real-time logging. Its contents will eventually become the documentation for this feature.

This feature has been integrated in the Orocos 1.x and 2.x branches but is still considered under development. However, if you need a real-time logging infrastructure (ie text messages to users), this is exactly where you need to be. If you need a real-time data stream logging of ports, use the OCL's Reporting NetCDFReporting Component instead.

It is noted in the text where Orocos 1.x and 2.x differ.

Restrictions and issues

Restrictions

Startup the logging components first: Logging events prior to logging service's configure() will be dropped. The problem is that the logging service connects categories and appenders, and is it itself a component. So until it is configured, and the connections are all made, no appenders are available to deal with the event. Therefore you are suggested to put your appender components and the logging service in a separate deployment XML or script file which is loaded first. This will allow your application components to use logging from the start (component creation). See the ocl/logging/tests/data availablility XML deployment files for examples. OCL's deployer can execute in order multiple XML or script files.

Categories can not be created in real-time: They live on the normal heap via new/delete. Create all categories in your component's constructor or during configureHook() or similar.

NDC's are not supported. They involve std::string and std::vector which we currently can't replace.

Works only with OCL's deployers: If you use a non-deployer mechanism to bring up your system, you will need to add code to ensure that the log4cpp framework creates our OCL::Category objects, and not the default (non-real-time) log4cpp::Category objects. This should be done early in your application, prior to any components and categories being created.

    log4cpp::HierarchyMaintainer::set_category_factory(
        OCL::logging::Category::createOCLCategory);

Issues

On the ML it was requested to log when events have been lost. There are two places that this would need to be implemented, both annotated with TODO's in the code.
  • When creation of the OCL::String objects in a LoggingEvent exhausts the memory pool
  • When the buffer between a category and its appenders is full

This is not currently dealt with, but could be in future implementations.

In RTT/OCL 1.x, multiple appenders connected to the same category will, receive only some of the incoming logging events. This is as each appender will pop different elements from the category's buffer. This issue has been solved in 2.x.

The size of the buffer between a category and its appenders is currently fixed (see ocl/logging/Category.cpp). This will be fixed lateron on the 2.x branch. Note that that fixed size plus the default consumption rate of the FileAppender means you can exhaust the default TLSF memory pool in very short order. For a complex application (~40 components, 400 Hz cycle rate) we increased the default buffer size to 200, increased the memory pool to 10's of kilobytes (or megabytes) and increased the FileAppender consumption rate to 500 messages per second.

Viewing logs

We can use standard log viewers for Log4j in two ways:

  1. Use FileAppender which writes log lines to a file and let the viewers read that file
  2. Use Log4cxxAppender which creates a network socket to which Log4cxx/Log4j viewers can connect.

These log viewers are compatible:

Complete application example

As at October 2010, assumes you are using for RTT 1.x:

And for RTT 2.x, use the Orocos Toolchain 2.2 or later from :

then build in the following order, with these options ON:

  • log4cpp (default options)
  • RTT: ENABLE_RT_MALLOC, OS_RT_MALLOC
  • OCL: BUILD_RTALLOC, BUILD_LOGGING

The deployer now defaults to a 20k real-time memory pool (see OCL CMake option ORO_DEFAULT_RTALLOC_SIZE), all Orocos RTT::Logger calls end up inside of log4cpp, and the default for RTT::Logger logging events is to log to a file "orocos.log". Same as always. But now you can configure all logging in one place!

IMPORTANT Be aware that there are two logging hierarchies at work here:

  1. a non-real-time, log4cpp-based logging in use by RTT::Logger (currently only for RTT 1.x)
  2. a real-time, OCL::Logging-based (with log4cpp underneath) in use by application code

In time, hopefully these two will evolve into just the latter.

Required Build flags

We're assuming here that you used 'orocreate-pkg' to setup a new application. So you're using the UseOrocos CMake macros.

  1. Your application's manifest.xml must depend on ocl.
  2. Your application's CMakeLists.txt must include the line : orocos_use_package(ocl-logging)

Both steps will make sure that your libraries link with the Orocos logging libraries and that include files are found.

Configuring real-time memory pool size

The deployer's have command line options for this

deployer-macosx --rtalloc-mem-size 10k
deployer-corba-macosx --rtalloc-mem-size 30m
deployer-corba-macosx --rtalloc 10240      # understands shortened, but unique, options
See note at top of file regarding TLSF's bookkeeping overhead. The pool needs to be larger than that value.

Configuring RTT::Logger logging

NOTE: this feature is not available on the official release. Skip to the next section (Configuring OCL::logging) if you're not using the log4cpp branch of the RTT

You can use any of log4cpp's configurator approaches to configure, but the deployer's already know about PropertyConfigurator's. You can pass a log4cpp property file to the deployer and that will be used to configure the first of the hierarchies above - the non-real-time, logging used by RTT::Logger. For example

deployer-macosx --rtt-log4cpp-config-file /z/l/log4cpp.conf
where the file /z/l/log4cpp.conf is something like
# root category logs to application (this level is also the default for all 
# categories who's level is NOT explicitly set in this file)
log4j.rootCategory=DEBUG, applicationAppender
 
# orocos setup
log4j.category.org.orocos.rtt=INFO, orocosAppender
log4j.additivity.org.orocos.rtt=false   # do not also log to parent categories
 
log4j.appender.orocosAppender=org.apache.log4j.FileAppender
log4j.appender.orocosAppender.fileName=orocos-log4cpp.log
log4j.appender.orocosAppender.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.orocosAppender.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{%Y%m%dT%T.%l} [%-5p] %m%n
This configuration file simply changes the output filename and format. You could also add additional appenders (e.g. to stdout, to socket) and change the logging level for sub-categories, if RTT supported them (e.g. scripting.rtt.orocos.org).

IMPORTANT Note the direction of the category name, from org to rtt. This is specific to log4cpp and other log4j-style frameworks. Using a category "rtt.orocos.org" and sub-category "scripting.rtt.orocos.org" won't do what you, nor log4cpp, expect.

Configuring OCL::logging (XML)

This is how you would setup logging from a Deployer XML file. If you prefer to use a script, see the next section.

See ocl/logging/tests/xxx.xml for complete examples and more detail, but in short

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "cpf.dtd">
<properties>
 
  <simple name="Import" type="string">
    <value>liborocos-logging</value>
  </simple>
  <simple name="Import" type="string">
    <value>libTestComponent</value>
  </simple>
 
  <struct name="TestComponent" type="OCL::logging::test::Component">
    <struct name="Activity" type="Activity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
  </struct>
 
  <struct name="AppenderA" type="OCL::logging::FileAppender">
    <struct name="Activity" type="Activity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <struct name="Properties" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple name="Filename" type="string"><value>appendera.log</value></simple>
      <simple name="LayoutName" type="string"><value>pattern</value></simple>
      <simple name="LayoutPattern" type="string"><value>%d [%t] %-5p %c %x - %m%n</value></simple>
    </struct>
  </struct>
 
  <struct name="LoggingService" type="OCL::logging::LoggingService">
    <struct name="Activity" type="Activity">
      <simple name="Period" type="double"><value>0.5</value></simple>
      <simple name="Priority" type="short"><value>0</value></simple>
      <simple name="Scheduler" type="string"><value>ORO_SCHED_OTHER</value></simple>
    </struct>
 
    <simple name="AutoConf" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
    <simple name="AutoStart" type="boolean"><value>1</value></simple>
 
    <struct name="Properties" type="PropertyBag">
      <struct name="Levels" type="PropertyBag">
        <simple name="org.orocos.ocl.logging.tests.TestComponent" 
                type="string"><value>info</value></simple>
      </struct>
 
      <struct name="Appenders" type="PropertyBag">
        <simple name="org.orocos.ocl.logging.tests.TestComponent" 
                type="string"><value>AppenderA</value></simple>
      </struct>
    </struct>
 
    <struct name="Peers" type="PropertyBag">
      <simple type="string"><value>AppenderA</value></simple>
    </struct> 
 
  </struct>
 
</properties>
which creates one component that logs to a org.orocos.ocl.logging.tests.TestComponent category, and that category is connected to one appender that logs to a file appendera.log.

Run this XML file, save it in 'setup_logging.xml' and use it:

  deployer-gnulinux -s setuplogging.xml

Configuring OCL::logging (Lua)

This is how you would setup logging from a Lua script file. If you prefer to use a XML, see the previous section.

require("rttlib")
 
-- Set this to true to write the property files the first time.
write_props=false
 
tc = rtt.getTC()
depl = tc:getPeer("deployer")
 
-- Create components. Enable BUILD_LOGGING and BUILD_TESTS for this to
-- work.
depl:loadComponent("TestComponent","OCL::logging::test::Component")
depl:setActivity("TestComponent", 0.5, 0, 0)
 
depl:loadComponent("AppenderA", "OCL::logging::FileAppender")
depl:setActivity("AppenderA", 0.5, 0, 0)
 
depl:loadComponent("LoggingService", "OCL::logging::LoggingService")
depl:setActivity("LoggingService", 0.5, 0, 0)
 
test = depl:getPeer("TestComponent")
aa = depl:getPeer("AppenderA")
ls = depl:getPeer("LoggingService")
 
depl:addPeer("AppenderA","LoggingService")
 
-- Load marshalling service to read/write components
depl:loadService("LoggingService","marshalling")
depl:loadService("AppenderA","marshalling")
 
if write_props then
   ls:provides("marshalling"):writeProperties("logging_properties.cpf")
   aa:provides("marshalling"):writeProperties("appender_properties.cpf")
   print("Wrote property files. Edit them and set write_props=false")
   os.exit(0)
else
   ls:provides("marshalling"):loadProperties("logging_properties.cpf")
   aa:provides("marshalling"):loadProperties("appender_properties.cpf")
end
 
test:configure()
aa:configure()
ls:configure()
 
test:start()
aa:start()
ls:start()

To run this script, save it in 'setup_logging.lua' and do:

rttlua-gnulinux -i setup_logging.lua

Using OCL::Logging in C++

The component itself uses logging like the following simplified example
// TestComponent.hpp
#include <ocl/LoggingService.hpp>
#include <ocl/Category.hpp>
 
class Component : public RTT::TaskContext
{
...
    /// Our logging category
    OCL::logging::Category* logger;
};
// TestComponent.cpp
#include <rtt/rt_string.hpp>
 
Component::Component(std::string name) :
        RTT::TaskContext(name),
        logger(dynamic_cast<OCL::logging::Category*>(
                   &log4cpp::Category::getInstance("org.orocos.ocl.logging.tests.TestComponent")))
{
}
 
bool Component::startHook()
{
    bool ok = (0 != logger);
    if (!ok)
    {
        log(Error) << "Unable to find existing OCL category '" << categoryName << "'" << endlog();
    }
 
    return ok;
}
 
void Component::updateHook()
{
    // RTT 1.X
    logger->error(OCL::String("Had an error here"));
    logger->debug(OCL::String("Some debug data ..."));
    // RTT 2.X
    logger->error(RTT::rt_string("Had an error here"));
    logger->debug(RTT::rt_string("Some debug data ..."));
    logger->getRTStream(log4cpp::Priority::DEBUG) << "Some debug data and a double value " << i;
}

IMPORTANT YOu must dynamic_cast to an OCL::logging::Category* to get the logger, as shown in the constructor above. Failure to do this can lead to trouble. You must also use explicitly use OCL::String() syntax when logging. Failure to do this produces compiler errors, as otherwise the system defaults to std::string and then you are no longer real-time. See the FAQ below for more description.

And the output of the above looks something like this:

// file orocos.log, from RTT::Logger configured with log4cpp
20100414T09:50:11.844 [INFO] ControlTask 'HMI' found CORBA Naming Service.
20100414T09:50:11.845 [WARN] ControlTask 'HMI' already bound to CORBA Naming Service.
and from a deployer with OCL::logging (note that here the categories are set as components.something)
20100414T21:41:22.539 [INFO ] components.HMI Started servicing::HMI
20100414T21:41:23.039 [DEBUG] components.Robot Motoman robot started
20100414T21:41:42.539 [INFO ] components.ConnectionMonitor Connected
and if you combine RTT::Logger and your own log4cpp-logging, say in a GUI application
20100414T21:41:41.982 [INFO ] org.orocos.rtt Thread created with scheduler type '1', priority 0 and period 0.
20100414T21:41:41.982 [INFO ] org.orocos.rtt Creating Proxy interface for HMI
20100414T21:41:42.016 [DEBUG] org.me.myapp Connections made successfully
20100414T21:41:44.595 [DEBUG] org.me.myapp.Robot Request position hold

The last one is the most interesting. All RTT::Logger calls have been sent to the same appender as the application logs to. This means you can use the exact same logging statements in both your components (when they use OCL::Logging) and in your GUI code (when they use log4cpp directly). Less maintenance, less hassle, only one (more) tool to learn. The configuration file for the last example looks something like

# root category logs to application (this level is also the default for all 
# categories who's level is NOT explicitly set in this file)
log4j.rootCategory=DEBUG, applicationAppender
 
# orocos setup
log4j.category.org.orocos.rtt=INFO, applicationAppender
log4j.additivity.org.orocos.rtt=false   # do not also log to parent categories
 
# application setup
log4j.category.org.me =INFO, applicationAppender
log4j.additivity.org.me=false         # do not also log to parent categories
 
log4j.category.org.me.gui=WARN
log4j.category.org.me.gui.Robot=DEBUG
log4j.category.org.me.gui.MainWindow=INFO
 
log4j.appender.applicationAppender=org.apache.log4j.FileAppender
log4j.appender.applicationAppender.fileName=application.log
log4j.appender.applicationAppender.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.applicationAppender.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{%Y%m%dT%T.%l} [%-5p] %c %m%n

Technical details

  • We rely on a real-time allocator called TLSF.
  • There is a several kilobyte overhead for TLSF's bookkeeping (~3k on 32-bit Ubuntu, ~6k on 64-bit Snow Leopard). You must take this into account, although the standard OCL TLSF pool size (256k) should cover your needs.
  • Only the OCL::String (in 1.x) and RTT::rt_string (in 2.x) objects in OCL::logging::LoggingEvent objects use the real-time memory pool.
  • When you create a category, all parent categories up to the root are created. For example, "org.me.myapp.cat1" causes creation of five (5) categories: "org.me.myapp.cat1", "org.me.myapp", "org.me", "org", and "" (the root category) (presuming none of these already exist). These all occur on the normal heap (see below).
  • Currently, exhausting the real-time memory pool results in logging events being silently dropped (also, see next item).
  • For real-time performance, ensure that TLSF is built with MMAP and SBRK support OFF in RTT's CMake options (-DOS_RT_MALLOC_MMAP=OFF -DOS_RT_MALLOC_SBRK=OFF).
  • TLSF use with multiple threads is currently supported only for non-macosx platforms. Use on macosx will exhibit (understandable) corruption in the TLSF bookkeeping (causes assert's).

FAQ

Logging statements are not recorded

Q: You are logging and everything seems fine, but you get no output to file/socket/stdout (depending on what your appender is).

A: Make sure you are using an OCL::logging::Category* and not a log4cpp::Category. The latter will silently compile and run, but it will discard all logging statements. This situation can also mask the fact that you are accidentally using std::string and not OCL::String. For example

log4cpp::Category* logger = log4cpp::Category::getInstance(name);
logger->debug("Hello world")
When the above is used within the OCL real-time logging framework, no logging statements are recorded and it is not running in real-time. Changing the above to

OCL::logging::Category* logger = 
  dynamic_cast<OCL::logging::Category*>(&log4cpp::Category::getInstance(name));
logger->debug("Hello world")
will cause a compile error of
/path/to/log4cpp/include/log4cpp/Category.hh: In member function ‘virtual bool MyComponent::configureHook():
/path/to/log4cpp/include/log4cpp/Category.hh:310: error:void log4cpp::Category::debug(const char*, ...)’ is inaccessible
/path/to/my/source/MyComponent.cpp:64: error: within this context
because the "Hello world" string is being treated as a std::string, which you can not use with OCL::logging::Category. Finally, correct the code to

OCL::logging::Category* logger = 
  dynamic_cast<OCL::logging::Category*>(&log4cpp::Category::getInstance(name));
logger->debug(OCL::String("Hello world"))
and the code compiles and runs, and now logging statements are recorded.

omniORBpy - python binding for omniORB

This page describes a working example of using omniORBpy to interact with an Orocos component. The example is very simple, and is intended for people who do not know where to start developing a CORBA client.

Your first stop is: http://omniorb.sourceforge.net/omnipy3/omniORBpy/ The omniORBpy version 3 User’s Guide. Read chapters 1 and 2. Optionally read chapter 6. The example works with and without naming services.

Once you are comfortable with omniORBpy, do the following (I assume you are kind enough to be a Linux user working on a console):

  1. download the rtt examples, and compile the smallnet orocos component (you might need first to fix the Makefile paths):
    • wget http://www.orocos.org/stable/examples/rtt/rtt-examples-1.10.0.tar.gz
      tar xf rtt-examples-1.10.0.tar.gz 
      cd rtt-examples-1.10.0/corba-example/
      make smallnet
  2. download the corba idls and, for simplicity's sake, copy the IDLs to a new empty directory:
    • svn co http://svn.mech.kuleuven.be/repos/orocos/trunk/rtt/src/corba/ 
      mkdir omniclt 
      cp corba/*idl omnictl/
      cd omniclt
  3. generate the Python stubs, two new directories should appear (namely RTT and RTT__POA)
    • omniidl -bpython *idl 
  4. download the attached python file (orocosclient.py) to your home directory and copy it where your IDLs are (current directory)
    • cp ~/orocosclient.py .
  5. open a new console and run your smallnet application
    • sudo ../smallnet

If you get something like

0.011 [ Warning][SmallNetwork] ControlTask 'ComponentA' could not find CORBA Naming Service.
0.011 [ Warning][SmallNetwork] Writing IOR to 'std::cerr' and file 'ComponentA.ior'
IOR:0...10100
it means your omniNames is either not configured or not running. Try:
sudo ../smallnet -ORBInitRef NameService=corbaname::127.0.0.1
if this work (you see a line like: 0.011 [ Info ][SmallNetwork] ControlTask 'ComponentA' found CORBA Naming Service.) then you need to modify the paremeter InitRef in your omniORB4.cfg (or similar, which is usually in /etc/) and make it read like:
InitRef=NameService=corbaname::127.0.0.1
  • finally run the python application
    • python orocosclient.py 

If you are not able to make your naming service work, try using the component's IOR. After running you smallnet server, copy the complete IOR printed on screen and paste it as argument to the python program (including the word "IOR:")

python orocosclient.py IOR:0...10100

Look at the IDLs and the code to understand how things work. I am no python expert, so if the coding style looks weird to you, my apologies. Good luck!

AttachmentSize
orocosclient.py_.txt1.99 KB

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Future home of FAQ

How to build Debian packages

Rationale

You want to build debian packages once, so that you can install on multiple machines without building from source on each.

Assumptions

  1. You are building for gnulinux only.
  2. You have "svn-b", etc, alises setup (see "man svn-buildpackage").
  3. You are using Synaptic as your package manager.
  4. Example code is for Orocos v1.8, but also applies to later versions, including 2.x
  5. BASE_DIR is whatever directory you want to put everything into.

To build the Orocos RTT packages (1.x)

cd BASE_DIR
svn co ...
cd rtt
debchange -v 1.8.0-0
cd debian
./create-control.sh gnulinux    # optionally add "lxrt", "xenomai"
svn add *1.8*install
cd ..
export DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="parallel=2"    # or 4, 8, depending on your computer
svn-br     # or svn-b

Packages are built into BASE_DIR/build-area.

To build the Orocos RTT packages (2.x)

cd BASE_DIR
git clone http://git.gitorious.org/orocos-toolchain/rtt.git
cd rtt
debchange -v 2.3.0-1
cd debian
./create-control.sh gnulinux    # optionally add "lxrt", "xenomai"
git add *2.3*install
git commit -sm"2.3 release install files"
cd ..
export DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="parallel=2"    # or 4, 8, depending on your computer
git-buildpackage --git-upstream-branch=origin

Packages are built into BASE_DIR/build-area.

Make the packages available to your package manager

Create your own repository

cd BASE_DIR
dpkg-scanpackages build_area /dev/null | gzip -9c > Packages.gz

Now open/etc/apt/sources.list in your favorite editor, and append the following lines to the bottom (substituting the full path to your repos for /path/to/BASE_DIR/).

# Orocos packages
deb file:///path/to/BASE_DIR/ ./

Open Synaptic, reload, search for orocos and install.

KDL and OCL

Follow the same basic approach first for KDL, then for OCL

  1. build packages
  2. update the repository doing just the "dpkg-scanpackages" line again
  3. install

NB KDL and OCL will happily both build into "build_area" alongside RTT.

Test installed packages

  • 1.x: Build the quicky components. Requires OCL (install at least the

orocos-ocl-gnulinux1.8-bin and liborocos-ocl-gnulinux1.8-dev packages).

# 1.x:
svn co ...
cd quicky
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make
 
# one of the following two exports, depending on your situation
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:.
 
deployer-gnulinux -s ../quicky.xml
ls Quicky   # you should see Data_W != 0

  • 2.x: Run 'orocreate-pkg testme' and try to build the testme package.

orocreate-pkg testme
cd testme
 
#non-ROS:
make install
#ROS:
make
 
deployer-gnulinux 
> import("testme")
> displayComponentTypes()

Test CORBA deployer

These instructions test inter-process communication on the same machine. See [2] for more details on running CORBA-based deployers between computers.

In the first shell start the naming service and the deployer

Naming_Service -m 0 -ORBDottedDecimalAddresses 1 -ORBListenEndpoints  iiop://127.0.0.1:2809 -ORBDaemon
export NameServiceIOR=corbaloc:iiop:127.0.0.1:2809/NameService
deployer-corba-gnulinux -s ../quicky.xml -- -ORBDottedDecimalAddresses 1
ls Quicky   # you should see Data_W != 0

In the second shell run the taskbrowser and see the Quicky component running in the deployer

export NameServiceIOR=corbaloc:iiop:127.0.0.1:2809/NameService
ctaskbrowser-gnulinux Deployer -ORBDottedDecimalAddresses 1
ls Quicky   # you should see Data_W != 0

Gotchas

If the v1.8 files have already been committed to the repository, then you don't need the debchange and svn add commands when building the packages.

Make repository available to other machines

See [1] below.

References

[1] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/repository-howto/repository-howto#setting-up [2] http://orocos.org/wiki/rtt/frequently-asked-questions-faq/using-corba

How to re-build Debian packages

This page describes how to re-build debian packages for another Debian/Ubuntu release than they were prepared for.

Note1: This only applies if you want to use the same version as the version in the package repository. If you want a newer version, consult How to build Debian packages.

Note2: The steps below will rebuild Orocos for all targets in the repository, so lxrt, xenomai and gnulinux. If you care only for one of these targets, see also How to build Debian packages.

First, make sure you added this deb-src line to your sources.list file:

deb-src http://www.fmtc.be/debian etch main
Next, type from your 'HOME/src' directory:

sudo apt-get update
apt-get source orocos-rtt
sudo apt-get build-dep orocos-rtt
sudo apt-get install devscripts build-essential fakeroot dpatch
cd orocos-rtt-1.6.0
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -us
cd ..
for i in *.deb; do sudo dpkg -i \$i; done

You can repeat the same process for orocos-ocl.

Using CORBA

Outlines how to use CORBA to distribute applications. Differs by CORBA implementation and whether you are using DNS names or IP addresses. Examples below support the ACE/TAO and OmniORB CORBA implementations.

Sample system:

  • Deploying components in demo.xml with deployer-corba, on machine1.me.home with IP address 192.168.12.132
  • Running a GUI program demogui to connect to deployer components, on machine2.me.home with IP address 192.168.12.133
  • Use a name server without multi-casting[1], on machine1.me.home.
  • Using a bash shell.
  • Both machines are gnulinux (though this has been verified with macosx, and mixing macosx and gnulinux)

Working DNS

If you have working forward and reverse DNS entries (ie dig machine1.me.home returns 192.168.12.132, and dig -x 192.168.12.132 returns machine1.me.home)

ACE/TAO

machine1 \$ Naming_Service -m 0 -ORBListenEndpoints iiop://machine1.me.home:2809 \
-ORBDaemon &
machine1 \$ export NameServiceIOR=corbaloc:iiop:machine1.me.home:2809/NameService
machine1 \$ deployer-corba-gnulinux -s demo.xml
 
machine2 \$ export NameServiceIOR=corbaloc:iiop:machine1.me.home:2809/NameService
machine2 \$ ./demogui

OmniORB

OmniORB does not support the NameServiceIOR environment variable

machine1 \$ omniNames -start &
machine1 \$ deployer-corba-gnulinux -s demo.xml  
 
machine2 \$ ./demogui -ORBInitRef NameService=corbaloc:iiop:machine1.me.home:2809/NameService

Note that if you swap which machines run the deployer and demogui, then change the above to

machine1 \$ omniNames -start &
 
machine2 \$ deployer-corba-gnulinux -s demo.xml  -- \
-ORBInitRef NameService=corbaloc:iiop:machine1.me.home:2809/NameService
 
machine1 \$ ./demogui 

Non-working DNS or you must use IP addresses

If you don't have DNS or you must use IP addresses for some reason.

ACE/TAO

machine1 \$ Naming_Service -m 0 -ORBDottedDecimalAddresses 1 \
-ORBListenEndpoints iiop://192.168.12.132:2809 -ORBDaemon &
machine1 \$ export NameServiceIOR=corbaloc:iiop:192.168.12.132:2809/NameService
machine1 \$ deployer-corba-gnulinux -s demo.xml -- -ORBDottedDecimalAddresses 1
 
machine2 \$ export NameServiceIOR=corbaloc:iiop:192.168.12.132:2809/NameService
machine2 \$ ./demogui -ORBDottedDecimalAddresses 1

For more information on the ORBListenEndPoints syntax and possibilities, see http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/DOC_ROOT/TAO/docs/ORBEndpoint.html

OmniORB

machine1 \$ omniNames -start &
machine1 \$ deployer-corba-gnulinux -s demo.xml  
 
machine2 \$ ./demogui -ORBInitRef NameService=corbaloc:iiop:192.168.12.132:2809/NameService

And the reverse

machine1 \$ omniNames -start &
 
machine2 \$ deployer-corba-gnulinux -s demo.xml  -- \
-ORBInitRef NameService=corbaloc:iiop:192.168.12.132:2809/NameService
 
machine1 \$ ./demogui 

Localhost

Certain distro's and certain CORBA versions will exhibit problems even with localhost only scenarios (demonstrated with OmniORB under Ubuntu Jackaloupe). If you can not connect to the name service running on the same machine, substitue the primary network interface's IP address for localhost in any NameService value.

For example, instead of

machine1 \$ omniNames -start &
 
machine2 \$ deployer-corba-gnulinux -s demo.xml 

or even

machine1 \$ omniNames -start &
 
machine2 \$ deployer-corba-gnulinux -s demo.xml  -- \
-ORBInitRef NameService=corbaloc:iiop:localhost:2809/NameService

use

machine1 \$ omniNames -start &
 
machine2 \$ deployer-corba-gnulinux -s demo.xml  -- \
-ORBInitRef NameService=corbaloc:iiop:192.168.12.132:2809/NameService

NB as of RTT v1.8.2 and OmniORB v4.1.0, programs like demogui (which use RTT::ControlTaskProxy::InitOrb() to initialize CORBA) do not support -ORBDottedDecimalAddresses (in case you try to use it).

Multi-homed machines

Computers that have multiple network interfaces present additional problems. The following is for omniORB (verified with a mix of v4.1.3 on Mac OS X, andv v4.1.1 on Ubuntu Hardy), for a system running a name server, a deployer, and a GUI. The example system has a 192.168.1.0 wired subnet and a 10.0.10.0 wireless subnet, and you have a mobile vehicle that has to communicate over the wireless subnet but it also has a wired interface.

The problem may appear as one of

  • The vehicle can not contact the name server when the wired interface is disconnected but it is up (NB on rare occasions, we've seen this even with the wired interface disconnected and down!)
  • Your GUI can connect to the deployer, but then locks up or throws a CORBA exception when trying to connect to certain remote Orocos items (we had this happen specifically for methods with parameters).

The solution is to forcibly specify the endPoint parameter to the name server. In the omniorb.cfg file on the computer running the name server, add (for the example networks above)

endPoint = giop:tcp:10.0.10.14:
where 10.0.10.14 is the IP adrs of that computer. This forces the name server to publish end points on the wireless network first. Despite this, it will still publish the wired interface but it will come after the wireless. Specifying the endPoint parameter on the command line (instead of the config file) will not work, as then the name sever publishes the wired network first, and then the wireless network second.

If the above still does not work, then set the endPoint parameter in all computer's config files (note that the end point is the IP adrs of each computer, so it will be (say) 10.0.10.14 for the computer running the name server and the deployer, and (say) 10.0.10.21 for the computer running the GUI). This will force everyone onto the wireless network, instead of relying on what the name server is publishing.

To debug this problem see the debugging section below, but after starting the name server you will see it output its published endpoints (right after the configuration dump). Also, if you get the lockup then adding the debug settings will cause the GUI or deployer to output each message and what direction/IP it is going on. If they have strayed on to the wired network it will be visibly obvious.

NB we found that the clientTransportRule and serverTransportRule parameters had no affect on this problem.

NB the above solution works now matter which computer the name server is running on (ie with the deployer, or with the GUI).

Debugging

Add the following to the omniorb.cfg file

dumpConfiguration = 1
traceLevel = 25
and get ready for lots of output.

See also

[1] http://people.mech.kuleuven.be/~orocos/pub/stable/documentation/rtt/current/doc-xml/orocos-components-manual.html#id479277

ACE/TAO http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/TAO.html

OmniORB http://omniorb.sourceforge.net/

Installation

For general installation instructions specific to each software version, see the top level wiki page for each project (eg. RTT, KDL, etc) and look for Installation in the left toolbar.

See below for specific additional instructions.

Installing from binaries / package managers

Installing via Macports on Mac OS X

How to build Debian packages

Installing from source

To install from source on *NIX systems such as Linux and Mac OS X, see the installation page specific to your software version (e.g. v1.8 RTT).

To install from source on Windows, see the following wiki pages (also check the forums, a lot of good material is in there also).

Debian Etch installation from public repositories (x86 only!)

The Orocos Real-Time Toolkit and Component Library have been prepared as Debian packages for Debian Etch. The pages

How to build Debian packages

How to re-build Debian packages

contain instructions for building your own packages on other distributions, like Ubuntu.

Copy/paste the following commands, and enter your password when asked (only works in Ubuntu Feisty or later and Debian Etch or later):

wget -q -O - http://www.orocos.org/keys/psoetens.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget -q http://www.fmtc.be/debian/sources.list.d/fmtc.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/fmtc.list
These commands install the GPG key and the repository location of the Orocos packages.

Next, for Debian Etch, type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install liborocos-rtt-corba-gnulinux1.8-dev
You can install Orocos for additional targets (or versions) by replacing gnulinux1.8 by another target name (or version). All target libraries can be installed at the same time, the -dev header files only for a single target and version at a time.

For your application development, you'll most likely use the Orocos Component library as well:

sudo apt-get install orocos-ocl-gnulinux1.8-dev orocos-ocl-gnulinux1.8-bin
Again, you may install additional targets and/or versions.

We recommend using the pkg-config tool to discover the compilation flags required to compile your application with the RTT or OCL. This is described in the installation manual.

Installing via Macports on Mac OS X

These are instructions to install the latest version of each of RTT, KDL, BFL and OCL, on Mac OS X using Macports.

Macports does not have official ports for these Orocos projects, however, the approach below is the recommended way to load unofficial ports in to Macports. [1]

Installation

These instructions use /opt/myports to hold the Orocos port files. You can substitute any other directory for MYPORTDIR (ie /opt/myports). Instructions are for bash shell - change appropriately for your own shell.

1. Download the Portfile files from this page's Attachments (at bottom of page).

2. Execute the following commands (substituting /opt/myports for the location you wish to store the Orocos port files, and ~/Downloads for the directory you downloaded the portfiles to)

export MYPORTDIR=/opt/myports
export DOWNLOADDIR=~/Downloads
 
mkdir \$MYPORTDIR
cd \$MYPORTDIR
mkdir devel
cd devel
mkdir orocos-rtt orocos-kdl orocos-bfl orocos-ocl
cp \$DOWNLOADDIR/orocos-rtt-Portfile.txt orocos-rtt/Portfile
cp \$DOWNLOADDIR/orocos-kdl-Portfile.txt orocos-kdl/Portfile
cp \$DOWNLOADDIR/orocos-bfl-Portfile.txt orocos-bfl/Portfile
cp \$DOWNLOADDIR/orocos-ocl-Portfile.txt orocos-ocl/Portfile
And for the RTT patch file
cd \$MYPORTDIR/devel
mkdir orocos-rtt/files
cp \$DOWNLOADDIR/rtt-patch-config-check_depend.cmake.diff orocos-rtt/files/patch-config-check_depend.cmake.diff

You should now have a tree that looks like

tree /opt/myports/
/opt/myports/
`-- devel
    |-- orocos-bfl
    |   `-- Portfile
    |-- orocos-kdl
    |   `-- Portfile
    |-- orocos-ocl
    |   `-- Portfile
    `-- orocos-rtt
       |-- Portfile
       `-- files
           `-- patch-config-check_depend.cmake.diff

3. Edit /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf with superuser privileges (ie via sudo), and add the follwing line before the rsync:///rsync.macports.org/...' line.

# (substitute your ''MYPORTDIR'' value from above) 
file:///opt/myports

4. Execute these commands to tell Macports about your new ports.

cd \$MYPORTDIR
sudo portindex

5. Now install each port with the following commands (the following commands add the optional CORBA support, via omniORB in Macports, as well as the helloworld and other useful parts of OCL)

sudo port install orocos-rtt +corba
sudo port install orocos-kdl +corba
sudo port install orocos-bfl
sudo port install orocos-ocl +corba+deployment+motion_control+reporting+taskbrowser+helloworld

6. Verify installation by downloading test-macports.xml from this page's Attachments, and then using these commands

deployer-macosx -s /path/to/test-macports.xml
This should succesfully load and start the OCL HelloWorld component within the taskbrowser. You may need to specify the paths to the dynamic libraries, for this to work
export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/lib
Yes, it is DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH and not DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH. Search the forum if you want to know why ...

Building your application

To build against MacPorts-installed Orocos, add the following to your environment before CMake'ing your project

export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/opt/local
If you already have CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH set, then append "/opt/local" to your existing entry.

If you use Makefiles or autoconf to build your project, you'll need to tell those build systems to find Orocos headers, libraries and binaries under /opt/local. Instructions are not provided here for that.

To run using MacPorts-installed OROCOS, add the following to your environment

export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/local/lib:/opt/local/lib/rtt/macosx/plugins
If you already have DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH set, then append the above to your existing entry.

Updating an existing installation

(Not yet tested)

  1. Download the new portfiles.
  2. Uninstall each of the old ports

...
sudo port uninstall orocos-rtt
  1. Copy the new portfiles on top of the old ones
  2. Regenerate the port index
  3. Reinstall

Limitations and issues

Current limitations

  • CORBA support assumes omniorb
  • KDL supports the Python plugin for Python 2.5, but not Python 2.6.
  • BFL defaults to boost
  • OCL could use more variants to provide finer control

Issues

  • If when running an Orocos executable, or your own executable linked with Orocos, you get the following error

dyld: Symbol not found: __cg_jpeg_resync_to_restart 
  Referenced from: 
/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/\
Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/ImageIO 
  Expected in: /opt/local/lib/libJPEG.dylib 
then ensure you have the DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH set and not DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH. See [2] for further details.

References

[1] Macports guide with detailed information on the port system.

[2] http://www.nabble.com/Incorrect-libjpeg.dylib-after-installing-ImageMagick-td22625866.html

Original bug report for this and accompanying forum entry

AttachmentSize
orocos-rtt-Portfile.txt1.82 KB
orocos-kdl-Portfile.txt2.13 KB
orocos-bfl-Portfile.txt1.36 KB
orocos-ocl-Portfile.txt2.67 KB
rtt-patch-config-check_depend.cmake_.diff607 bytes
test-macports.xml472 bytes

RTT Dictionary

RTT Dictionary

This page containts a list of terms used in RTT (and Orocos in general).

Activity

  • An Activity object executes the ExecutionEngine, which in turn executes programs, state machines, processes, incoming commands, incoming events and finally executes the user code.
  • An activity can be: activity, periodic activity, non-periodic activity, sequential activity, slave activity...

Attribute

  • Attributes are solely for run-time values.
  • You can alter the attributes of any task, program or state machine. The TaskBrowser will confirm validity of the assignment with 'true' or 'false'

Command

  • Commands are 'sent' by other components to instruct the receiver to 'reach a goal'
  • When a command is entered, it is sent to the component, which will execute it in its own thread on behalf of the sender. The different stages of its lifetime are displayed by the prompt. Hitting enter will refresh the status line.
  • A Command might be rejected (return false) in case it received invalid arguments.
  • A command has a designated reciever.
  • A command cannot, in general, be completely executed instantaneously, so the caller should not block and wait for its completion.
  • But the Command object offers all functionalities to let the caller know about the progress in the execution of the command.
  • Commands are used for actions taking time and setpoints.

Component

  • Components are implemented by the TaskContext class.
  • It is useful speaking of a context because it defines the context in which an activity (a program) operates. It defines the interface of the component, its properties, its peer components and uses its ExecutionEngine to execute its programs and to process commands and events.
  • A task's interface consists of members.

Data-Flow Ports

  • Data-Flow Ports are a thread-safe data transport mechanism to communicate buffered or un-buffered data between components.
  • When a value is Set(), it is sent to whatever is connected to that port. Use Get() to read the port.
  • The advantage of using ports is that they are completely thread-safe for reading and writing, without requiring user code.

Events

  • Events are related to commands, but allow broadcasting of data, while a command has a designated receiver.
  • Events allows functions to be executed when a change in the system occurs.
  • eg. alarms, publishing state changes

Members

  • Members are: Commands, Methods, Ports, Attributes and Properties and Events, which are all public.

Method

  • Methods are used for algorithms and complex configurations.
  • Methods are callable by other components to 'calculate' a result immediately, just like a 'C' function.

Peer

  • The peers of a component are the components which are known, and may be used, by this component.

Property

  • Properties are meant for persistent configuration and can be written to disk.
  • Properties are run-time modifiable parameters, stored in XML files..

RTT on MS Windows

This page collects all the documentation users collected for building and using RTT on Windows. Note that Native Windows support is available from RTT 1.10.0 on, and that you might no longer need some of the proposed workarounds (such as using mingw or cygwin).

The recommended way of compiling the RTT on Windows is by using the Compiling on Windows with Visual Studio instructions.

Compiling RTT in Windows/MinGW Native API

Status

The native API port of RTT can be found in the 1.10.x releases. Only minor issues are left and most unit tests pass.
  • it is based solely on mingw32, no msys or cygwin.
  • it use native windows threads. No need for pthreads.
  • only ports RTT, CORBA is supported as well.
  • it uses the fixes that Peter made regarding 'weak' symbol handling.
  • 1 unit test is till doing difficult
  • Priorities are supported on thread level, though creating new processes could help get better "realtime" support.

This document is slightly outdated.

Compiling RTT

  • CMake is used to generate the project: cmake -G"MinGW Makefiles" .

Linking and Compiling an application

To have something sort of working under native Win32/Visual Studio 2003 using the MinGW Compiled RTT (with the patches).

Using the info here: http://www.mingw.org/old/mingwfaq.shtml#faq-msvcdll

I managed to create DEF files, and use Microsofts LIB tool to turn the library it into something MSVC likes.

I'm no CMake expert, and don't have the time to learn **another** build scripting language, however I created the CMake files in the usual way, built RTT and ensure it compiled cleanly. I hacked the created makefiles by a search of my source tree for "--out-implib" and found that link.txt that lives in build\src\CMakeFiles\orocos-rtt-dynamic_win32.dir had that string in it. So I added the --output-def,..\..\libs\liborocos-rtt-win32.dll.def, to create the def file, and rebuilt RTT, this created the DEF file, I than ran it through the Microsoft LIB tool as described.

I then created a MSVC project, added the library to my linker settings, and made a very simply MSVC console application:

#include "rtt\os\main.h"
#include "rtt\rtt-config.h"
 
int ORO_main(int, char**)
{
      return 0;
}

I also needed to setup my MSVC preprocessor definitions:

NDEBUG
_CONSOLE
__i386__
__MINGW32__
OROCOS_TARGET=win32

Hopefully I am now at a stage when I can actually start to evaluate RTT :-) If anyone has any ideas on how to properly get the CMakeList.txt to generate the DEF files without nasty post-CMake hacks, then I would love to hear it...

Compiling on Windows with Visual Studio

This page summarizes how to compile RTT with Microsoft Visual Studio, using the native win32 api. RTT supports Windows out of the box from RTT 1.10.0 and 2.3.0 on. OCL is supported from 1.12.0 and 2.3.0 on.

This tutorial assumes you extracted the Orocos sources and all its dependencies in c:\orocos

For new users, RTT/OCL v2.3.x or later is recommended, included in the Orocos Toolchain v2.3.x.

Rationale

We only support Visual Studio 2008 and 2005. Support for 2010 is on its way. You're invited to try VS2010 out and suggest patches to the orocos-dev mailing list.

Orocos does not come with a Visual Studio Solution. You need to generate one using the CMake tool which you can download from http://www.cmake.org. The most important step for CMake is to set the paths to where the dependencies of Orocos are installed. So before you can get to building Orocos, you need to build its dependencies, which don't use CMake, but their own build mechanism.

Only RTT and OCL of the toolchain are supported on Windows. The ruby based 'orogen' and 'typegen' tools, part of the toolchain, are not supported. Also ROS integration is not supported on Windows.

Important notice about Release or Debug

Debug and Release builds can not be mixed in Visual Studio's C++ compiler (you will have crashes when mixing a Debug and Release DLL that has a C++ API). By convention, a Debug .DLL can be recognized because it ends with ....d.dll. We recommend that you do Release builds when evaluating the Orocos toolchain and on production systems. Debug builds are considerably larger than Release builds.

RTT Dependencies

There are two major libraries required by RTT: Boost C++ and a CORBA transport library (if you require one).

CORBA using ACE/TAO (optional)

In case you require distributed Orocos components, you need to setup ACE/TAO, which does the work under the hood for RTT. Download the latest TAO version, extract it and open the solution (ACE_wrappers/TAO/TAO_ACE_vc8.sln) file with Visual Studio. Build the 'Naming_Service_vc8' project, and make sure that you choose the configuration (Debug/Release) that fits your purpose. The Naming_Service project builds automatically the right components we need to build RTT. Check the TAO build instructions in case you encounter problems.

You must have this set as system environment variables:

set ACE_ROOT=c:\orocos\ACE_wrappers
set TAO_ROOT=%ACE_ROOT%\tao
set PATH=%PATH%;%ACE_ROOT%\bin;%ACE_ROOT%\lib

You can also set these using Configuration -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables

CORBA using OMNIORB (optional)

Untested.

Boost (required)

While TAO builds, you might want to check out the pre-built boost libraries from boost-pro consulting on http://www.boostpro.com/download . Alternatively, get boost from http://www.boost.org and follow their build instructions. RTT 1.10.0 requires Boost 1.36.0 at least, since it requires the intrusive containers added in that release. RTT 2.3.0 or later require Boost 1.40.0. Note this bug for Boost 1.44.0: https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/ticket/4487

We recommend Boost 1.40.0 for Windows. Also, unzip Boost with 7Zip or similar, but not with the default Windows unzip program, which is extremely slow.

Make sure to install these components: program_options, thread, unit_test_framework, filesystem, system.

Also add the lib directory to your PATH system environment variable:

set PATH=%PATH%;c:\orocos\boost_1_40\lib

CMake (required)

Download and install cmake (http://www.cmake.org). We're going to use cmake-gui.exe to configure our build system. Use CMake version 2.6.3 or newer.

XML Parser

RTT will use its internal 'tinyxml' parser on Windows. No need to install anything for this.

Setting up CMake

First you need to add two 'PATH' entries for telling cmake where Boost and TAO are installed. In the top RTT directory, there is a file named orocos-rtt.default.cmake. Copy it to orocos-rtt.cmake (in the same directory) and add these two lines:
set(CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH ${CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH} 
    "c:/orocos/boost_1_40;c:/orocos/ACE_wrappers;c:/orocos/ACE_wrappers/TAO;c:/orocos/ACE_wrappers/TAO/orbsvcs")
set(CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH ${CMAKE_LIBRARY_PATH} 
    "c:/orocos/boost_1_40/lib;c:/orocos/ACE_wrappers/lib")
(note the forward-slashes, even on Windows!) Edit these lines to use your Boost version and install location. The OROCOS_TARGET should be automatically detected. If not, add:
set( OROCOS_TARGET win32 CACHE STRING 
     "The Operating System target. One of [lxrt gnulinux xenomai macosx win32]")
and remove the lines with references to other OROCOS_TARGET settings.

Start the cmake-gui and set your source and build paths ( For example, c:\orocos\orocos-rtt-1.10.0 and c:\orocos\orocos-rtt-1.10.0\build ). Now click 'Configure' at the bottom. Check that there are no errors. If components are missing, you probably need to fix the above PATHs.

  • For RTT 1.12, turn OS_NO_ASM ON, for RTT 2.3.0, turn OS_NO_ASM OFF.

You probably need to click Configure again and then click 'Generate', which will generate your Visual Studio solution and project files in the 'build' directory.

Open the generated solution in MSVS and build the 'ALL_BUILD' target, which will build the RTT (and the unit tests if you enabled them).

Unit tests (Optional)

In order to enable unit tests, you need to turn on BUILD_TESTING in the CMake GUI.

The unit tests will fail if the required DLLs are not in your path. In your system settings, or on the command prompt of Windows, add c:\orocos\boost_1_40\lib and c:\orocos\ACE_wrappers\lib to your PATH environment (reboot if necessary).

Next, run a 'make install' and add the c:\orocos\bin directory to your PATH (or whatever you used as install path.) In RTT 2.3.0, the default install path is c:\Program Files\orocos (so add c:\Program Files\orocos\bin to PATH). It is recommended to keep this default, since OCL uses that too.

Now you should be able to run the unit tests. The process could be a bit streamlined more and may be improved in later releases.

Installing RTT

Once everything is build, you can use the 'INSTALL' project to copy the files into the correct installation directories. This is necessary for OCL and the other Orocos applications such that they find headers and libraries in the expected locations.

Building OCL

Building OCL on Windows follows a similar path as RTT. Start CMake and point it to your OCL source tree and create a 'build' directory in there.

OCL Dependencies

Also OCL needs to know where Boost, TAO and other dependencies are installed. There's again an orocos-ocl.default.cmake file which you can copy to orocos-ocl.cmake.

There is a separate Wiki page for enabling Readline (tab-completion) in the TaskBrowser. See Taskbrowser with readline on Windows.

Missing Features on Windows

  • The RTT on Windows is not real-time ! It exists for convenience, simulation, and use by Windows GUIs.

Compiling the RTT on Windows/cygwin

This page describes all steps you need to take in order to compile the real-time toolkit on a Windows machine. We rely on the Cygwin libraries and tools to accomplish this. Visual Studio or mingw32 are as of this writing not yet supported. Also CORBA is not yet ported.

Download and install Cygwin

You can get it from http://www.cygwin.com and use the setup.exe script. Make sure you additionally install:
  • From 'Devel': binutils, boost, boost-devel, cmake, cppunit, gcc4-g++, libncurses-devel, make, readline, subversion

Download, install and patch RTT

The official RTT release does not yet include cygwin support. You need to download the RTT 1.6 sources in your cygwin environment and apply the patch in attachment:
 cd orocos-rtt; patch -p1 < orocos-rtt-cygwin.patch
The patch can be found here: https://www.fmtc.be/bugzilla/orocos/show_bug.cgi?id=605

Build RTT

Create a build directory in the orocos-rtt directory (mkdir build) and run:
 cmake .. -DBOOST=/usr/include/boost-1_33_1
 make
This is a slow process. If you have multiple CPU cores, use 'make -j2' or -jN with N cores. In case you want to change more option, type 'ccmake ..' between the cmake and make commands.

Set your PATH

Cygwin relies on the PATH environment variable to locate the Orocos DLL's. From your build directory, type:
 export PATH=$PATH:`pwd`/src

Test your setup

Next test your setup with a 'make check' (add -jN). No more than 2 tests should fail, all related to timing.

Install your setup

Do 'make install'. The RTT will by default be installed in /usr/local. You don't need to add the /usr/local/lib directory to your PATH.

The 1st RTT Developers Workshop

Main SponsorMain Sponsor
Place: BARCELONA PAL Robotics offices

Calle Pujades 77-79, 4th floor 4ª 08005 Barcelona, Spain.

See also PAL Robotics

Date: Mo 19th of July - Fr 23 July
1st RTT Developers Workshop

AGENDA

Date Time Topic/Title & Mediator Description
Mon 19/7 9h-13h Big Picture Day

Arriving at PAL offices

Peter shows what 2.0 is and where it is heading
13h-14h Lunch
14h-19h Who're you + plans presentation You made some Impress/Beamer slides and present your work + ideas for future work in < 10 slides.
20h Dinner Opening dinner sponsored by The SourceWorks
Tue 20/7 9h-13h Typekit generation Orogen + message generation.

YARP transport 2.0 (only ports, no methods, events, etc).

Code explosion & extern template solution.

13h-14h Lunch
14h - 19h Component generation Introduction.

What is its place in RTT?

20h Dinner
Wed 21/7 9h-13h Building Fix up RTT/OCL cmake.

Structure of components, repositories and applications (graveyard/attic)

13h-14h Lunch
14h-16h Documentation improvement Structure. Website

Missing part.

Real examples and tutorials Examples. Restructure.

Success stories, who uses

16h Visiting
20h Dinner
Thu 22/7 9h-13h Logging Current status.

Fix architecture.

RTT::Logger remove/replace

13h-14h Lunch
14h-16h Reporting
16h-19h Upgrading from v1 to v2 Describe rtt v2 converter. Caveat document. Try out on user systems.
20h Dinner Closing dinner sponsored by The SourceWorks
Fri 23/7 9h-13h Wrapping-up Day Finishing loose ends, integration and discussions for future work
13h-14h Lunch
14h-17h Wrapping-up Day Finishing loose ends, integration and discussions for future work

If you need or want to provide sponsorship, contact Peter.

Participants - Please add your days of presence !

  • Peter Soetens (Sun 18/7 - Fri 23/7)
    • 19inch all-in-one Core2 system
    • Ubuntu 9.10
  • Sylvain Joyeux
  • Markus Klotzbuecher (Sun 18/7 - Fri 23/7)
    • TP x61
    • Debian Testing
  • Stephen Roderick (Fri 16/7 - Fri 23/7)
    • 15" Mac Book Pro
    • Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Ubuntu Lynx 10.04
  • Charles Lesire-Cabaniols (Mon 19/7 noon - Thu 22/7 8am)
    • Dell Core2 Laptop
    • Ubuntu lucid 10.4
  • Carles Lopez
  • Adolfo Rodriguez Tsouroukdissian (I will be around the whole week)

Ideas:

  • Presentation of participants: how, where and why Orocos is used by others
  • Build system ? Version control ? What web ressources ?
    • DFKI has its own build system (http://sites.google.com/site/rubyinmotion). Mainly standardized on CMake and git.
    • where to put the code and do release management ? (trying out gitorious.org ?)
    • use standard approach for end user build-support files across all sub-projects (ie if CMake, then use the same approach to FindXXX and Config files). Provide example use cases to build against Orocos (ie there is no FindOrocos-XXX.cmake provided by any sub-project, which IMHO is Very Bad for a new user).
  • the components: Orocos has the OCL and DFKI has already open-sourced some components. In what form do we want to distribute them ?
  • the toolchain: where are we going, what are we going to use and lay out a schedule for that.
    • idea from Peter to standardize the type description on the ROS datatypes vs. oroGen's C++ parser
    • component specification is more than datatypes. oroGen
  • release strategy: how to release RTT 2.0 and associated tools. Target date ?
  • integrating new transports
    • YARP transport from Charles
    • ROS transport ? (who would do that ?)
  • Additional maintainers (particularly for OCL)
  • Standardized API's to ease language bindings (eg Python, Java, LISP ... yes, LISP :-) )
  • Integration of dependant packages (e.g. TLSF). Currently (for real-time logging), we have a circular build problem in that RTT needs log4cpp, log4cpp needs TLSF, but TLSF is installed as part of RTT. Big Problem! Peter mentioned integrating log4cpp, but I'm not sure taht this is the best approach (ie long term consequences, keeping up with releases, scalability).
  • Integration of real-time logging from OCL into RTT
    • Use of real-time logging by RTT itself. Transition plan to accomplish this.
  • Clean shutdown semantics (ie allowing state machines and scripts to cleanly shutdown)
  • Scalability of deployment
    • Deploying subsystems/containers/groups of components
    • Parameterizing deployment files (e.g. variable substitution within XML files)

A. First day

Morning

Peter started to present the 2.x functionality, state and (from its point of view), shortcomings. The following are the points that have been risen during the discussion.

  • TimeService: what is it for, and is not there other solutions ?
  • right now, SlaveActivity is different from Slave execution engine. Why ?

Properties and attributes

  • RTT::Property[persistent] / RTT::Attribute[non persistent]
  • RTT::Property is NOT thread safe
  • know if a property has been written

Ports

  • could we have not OldData for buffer ports => how difficult ?
  • discussion on overruns, and default drop policy for buffers. In general, we need to discuss an interface to monitor transports
  • data flow now has N data holder elements, where N is the number of total connections. 1.x needed at most one data holder element per output port.

Methods / Operations / Services

  • operation execution policy: OwnThread vs.ClientThread. Agreed that OwnThread should be the default policy as it is safer from a thread-safety point of view.
  • better naming for ServiceRequester / ServiceProvider -- Method / Operation
    • rename ServiceRequester to Service to map Operation
    • what about the caller side ?
      • OperationHandle
      • __OperationCaller__ for now, preferred as it says what it does
      • PeerOperation
      • RemoteOperation
      • OperationProxy (-- for Peter and Markus)
      • OperationStub (-- for Peter and Markus)
      • OperationInterface (no: Interface is used a lot in the code for base classes)

Misc

  • chicken and egg problem with the deployer, especially with basic services like real-time logging

Plugins

  • possibility to do autoloading based on a PATH environment variable or to do loading per-plugin
  • there is a cost to load a typekit that is not needed as the shared library has to be mapped in memory and typekits are quite big

Code size

  • instanciating RTT::Operation for void()(void)
    • 60kB for dispatching code
    • 60kB for distributed C++ dispatching code
    • Yuk

Events

  • 2.0 does not have events right now
  • can (and will) be implemented on top of the ports
  • one limitation: only one argument. Not a big issue if we have an automated wrapping like oroGen
  • we're now getting into the details of event handling ;-)

end

B. Second day

The discussions starts with explaining the improved TypeInfo infrastructure:

  • Normally , everything should be generated by the tools
  • If the tools don't make it, you can generate a typekit manually by:
    • Add a StructTypeInfo<T> instead of TemplateTypeInfo<T> (the latter still exists)
    • Define a boost::serialization function the decomposes your struct

ROS messages and orogen

  • Can orogen parse a generated ros message class ?
    • It can't since it does not work when a class has virtual functions. Also the ANTLR parser is not 'good enough'.
    • gccxml tool can help here, it also removes ANTLR then.

Sylvain explains how orogen works

  • List dependencies
  • Declare used types (header files to use)
  • Declare task definitions
  • Declare deployments

Sylvain shows how orogen requires the #ifndef __orogen in the headers listed. gccxml is a fix for this too.

Hosting on gitorious is being discussed. It allows us to group code in 'projects' and collaborate better using git.

Autoproj is discussed as a tool to bootstrap the orocos packages. It's an alternative to manually download and build everything. It may work in parallel with rosbuild, in case application software depends on both ros and orocos. This needs to be tested.

The work is divided for the rest of the day:

  • Charles + Peter : Yarp transport for 2.0
  • Markus + Peter : Find collect segfault bug
  • Stephen + Sylvain: Mac OS-X testing of autoproj/ruby etc.
  • Sylvain + Peter + Markus : gccxml into orogen

We decided to rename orogen to typegen

The day concluded with investigating the code size/compile time issue. The culprits are the operations added to the ports in the typekit code. We investigated several solutions to tackle this, especially in the light of code/typekit generation.

C. Third day

The day started with a re-evaluation of the agenda and release timelines. The proposed release date for 2.0 was august 16th.

This list of topics will be covered this week:

  • Documentation review
  • Website review
  • Real-time Logging
  • Build system review
  • Crash in Collect found by Markus
  • Yarp transport

This list of issues will be solved before 2.0.0:

  • Code size/compilation time issue
  • Tool + cmake macros to create new component projects
  • typegen tool to generate type kits
  • gitorious migration of all orocos projects, including code generation tools
  • OCL cleanup and migration to new cmake macros

These issues will be delayed after 2.0.0:

  • Thread-safe property writing (allow a peer/3rd party to change a property)
  • Attribute/Property resolution, ie, maybe it's easier to introduce a 'persistent' flag in properties which flags if it needs to be serialized or not. Attributes can then be removed.
  • Service discovery. Sylvain manages these things in a supervision layer written in Ruby. It's not clear yet how far the C++ DeploymentComponent needs to go in this issue.
  • Diagnostics service that detects thread overruns, buffer overflows etc.
  • Connection browsing: ask a port to which other ports it is connected such that we can visualise that
  • Deployment gui to show or create component networks
  • Full Mac-OS-X and Win32 support. These will mature in the 2.0.x releases as users on these platforms test the release.

The rest of the day continued as planned on the agenda. In the morning, a new CMake build system for components, plugins and executables was created to maximize maintainability and ease-of-use of creating new Orocos software. OCL too will switch to this system. The interface (CMake macros) and logic behind it was discussed. This tool will be further developed to be ready before the 2.0 release.

In the afternoon, the documentation and website structure was discussed. We came to the conclusion that no-one only downloads the RTT. For 2.0, they will download, RTT, the infrastructure components (TaskBrowser, Deployment, Reporting, Diagnostics etc) and the tool-chain (typekit generation, component generation etc.). This will require a restructuring of the website and the documentation, to no longer be RTT-centric, but to be 'Orocos ecosystem' centric.

The documentation will contain 3 pillars:

  • Getting started
    1. Download toolchain
    2. Build
    3. Run demo
  • Setting up a real system
    1. Your first component
    2. Deploying it
    3. Creating a component network
  • Reference documentation
    1. API
    2. Cheat-Sheet
    3. Manuals

The reference manuals will be cleaned up too, such that they suit better 'for reference' and less serve as 'first read for new users'.

During this day, the code size problem, typegen development and Yarp transport were also further polished.

It ended with a visit to 'Parc Guell' and a walk to the old city centre, where we enjoyed a well deserved tapas meal.

Compiling RTT in Windows/MinGW + pthreads-32

This page describes the steps to take in order to compile the real-time toolkit (RTT) on a Windows machine, under MinGW and pthreads-32.

The following has been tested on Windows XP, running in a virtual machine on Mac OS X Leopard.

Outstanding issues

  • Not all RTT tests pass
  • TAO does not completely build
  • CORBA support in RTT untested due to the above

Warning: the default GCC 3.4.5 compiler in MinGW outputs a lot of warnings when compiling RTT. Mostly they are "foo might be used uninitialized in this function" in STL code.

Install MinGW

See the following links for the basic approach

See detailed instructions in URL's above and below, but basically (unless otherwise noted, all actions are in MSys Unix shell, and, all unix-built items are installed in /mingw (which is c:\msys\1.0\mingw in DOS prompt) )

  1. Install MinWG - base, C++, make (then add c:\minwg\bin to system PATH)
  2. Install msysxxx.exe
  3. Install msys DTK
  4. Install bash (i386 versions) by untarring in / in msys
  5. Install coreutils-5.97-MSYS-1.0.11-snapshot.tar.bz by untar'ing and then manually copying contents to / (have to mv the bin/cp command)
  6. Download autoconf, automake and libtool: untar, configure with --prefix=/mingw, and build/install
  7. Set env vars in /etc/profile: CFLAGS, PKG_CONFIG_PATH
  8. Install glib2, gettext and pkg-config from gtk URL. Extract into /mingw

Install dependancy packages

Compile CMake from unix source (in build dir)
 cmake-xxx/bootstrap --prefix=/mingw --no-qt-gui
 make && make install
Run pthreads32 installer (just untar's)
    - manually copy pre-built/include/* to /c/mingw/include    (C:\mingw/include)
    - manually copy pre-built/lib/*GC2* to /c/mingw/lib        (C:\mingw/lib)
    - to run pthreads tests, need to copy prebuilt .a/.dll into .. dir, and copy queueuserapcex to ../.. 
Boost (as at 2009-Jan, use v1.35 not v1.37 until we fix RTT for v1.37)
    *** DOS shell ***
    cd boost-jam-xxx
    .\build.bat gcc        ** won't build in unix shell with build.sh **
    *** unix shell ***
    cd boost-jam-xxx
    cp binntx86/bjame.exe /mingw/bin
    cd ~/software/build/boost_1_35
    bjam --toolset=gcc --layout=system --prefix=/mingw --with-date_time --with-graph \ 
        --with-system --with-function_types  --with-program_options  install
Cppunit, get tarball from sourceforge
    untar and configure with --prefix=/mingw
    correct line 7528 in libtool, to be c:/MinGW/bin../lib/dllcrt2.o for first item 
    make && make install

Build RTT

Get trunk of RTT, patch with this file, configure (ensure set OROCOS_TARGET=win32), make, and install as usual.
 cd /path/to/rtt; patch -p0 < patch-rtt-mingw-1.patch
 

Set your PATH

Ensure your PATH in the MSYS shell contains /mingw/bin and /mingw/lib.

Test your setup

Next test your setup with a 'make check'. Currently 4 of 8 tests fail ... more work to do here.

Partial ACE/TAO CORBA build

This gets most of ACE/TAO to build, but not yet all.
    download, follow MinGW build instructions on the website.
        add "#undef ACE_LACKS_USECONDS_T" to ace/config-win32-mingw.h" before compiling
    copy ace/libACE.dll to /mingw/lib
    make TAO ** this fails
    You can build all we need by manually doing ''make'' in the following directories. Note that the last couple of TAO dir's have problems.
        ace, ace/protocols, kokyu, tao, tao/TAO_IDL, tao/orbsvcs    
NB Can parallel build ace but not its tests nor tao.

NB Not all tests pass. At least one of the ACE tests fail.

More useful URLs

http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MinGWiki http://iua-share.upf.es/wikis/clam/index.php/Devel/Windows_MinGW_build http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/ http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html http://www.cleardefinition.com/page/Build_Boost_for_MinGW/ http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/DOC_ROOT/ACE/ACE-INSTALL.html#mingw http://psi-im.org/wiki/Compiling_Qt4_on_Windows http://www.qtsoftware.com/downloads/opensource/appdev/windows-cpp

D. Fourth day

Logging Day

Stephen gives an overview of the current log4cpp + Orocos architecture and how he accomplished real-time logging. Log4cpp supports

  • 1 category can have 0..* appenders
  • 1 appender has 0..1 category (0 makes no sense though)

Orocos supports

  • A RTString type that uses tlsf, but still lives in OCL.
  • A real-time logging category type. Any number of these can be created with their own 'org.orocos.rtt.xyz' scope.
  • A file appender component type. Appending over the network (CORBA) is untested though

Decisions for v2.0

  • Deprecate RTT::Logger in v2.0
  • Move OCL::String into RTT
  • Move log4cpp itself into RTT (or into orocos-log4cpp gitorious project)

v2.2 or later

  • Move OCL::Logging into RTT and port to v2.x
  • Make LoggingService support lookup of ports by category (called via operation to do so)
  • Support multiple appenders per category
  • Either logging messages go to stderr if appender not yet connected to category, or they continue to get discarded
  • Deployer by default starts LoggingService and FileAppender (to orocos.log). User can turn this behaviour off with a command line parameter, allowing them to configure the logging system via a site deployment file.
  • Add streaming capability : logger->debug << xyz;
  • Replace RTT::Logger with calls to RTT::Logging framework
  • Complete OCL::String plugin to support use within scripting
  • Add LoggingPlugin
  • support use from scripting to query, modify and use OCL::Category
  • Add additional appenders (eg socket)

Services discussion

Peter explains how services made their entry into the design and how they can be used.
  • Services have to have different names from ports (v2)
  • TaskContext has a default service (this->provides())
  • TC is really a service container/executor.
  • Properties and operations must be in a service
  • Ports were _not_ in a service. This will be changed such that ports belong to a Service. A Provides Service can have both input and output ports. This is reasonable and meets real-world semantics, however, it does sound slightly contradictory. Must be well explained with examples.
  • Talking of dropping the “Providers” in “ServiceProviders”, and just having “Services” and “ServiceRequestors”

E. Fifth day

It's hacking day and implementing/finishing most of what we started this week.

  • Stephen is testing on Mac-OS-X. Found a bug in tlsf where NULL and 0 were mixed, causing it not to handle memory exhaustion cases correctly.
  • Peter makes the API changes that were proposed and fixes bugs others find on the go.
  • Sylvain is setting up the gitorious project

The Road to RTT 2.0

This Chapter collects all information about the migration to RTT 2.0. Nothing here is final, it's a scratch book to get us there. There are talk pages to discuss the contents of these pages.

These are the major work areas:

  • New Data Flow API, proposed by S. Joyeux
  • Streamlined Execution Flow API, proposed by P. Soetens (RTT::Message)
  • Full distribution support and cleanup (Events in CORBA)
  • Alternative Data Flow transport layer (non blocking).
  • Small tools for interacting with Components

If you want to contribute, you can post your comments in the following wiki pages. It will be (hopefully) more concise and straightforward compared with the developers Forum.

  • Which weakness have you detected in RTT?
  • Which features would you like to have in RTT 2.0?

These items are worked out on separate Wiki pages.

RTT and OCL 2.0 have been merged on the master branches of all official git repositories:

Stable releases are on different branches, for example toolchain-2.0:

Goals for RTT 2.0

The sections below formulate the major goals which RTT 2.0 wishes to attain.

Simplicity

The Real-Time Toolkit shouldn't be in the way of building complex applications, instead it should help making it easier. We're improving on different fronts to make it more simple to use for both beginners and experienced power users.

API: user oriented

The API is clearly separated in what public (rtt user) and private (rtt internal) APIs are. The number of concepts are reduced and a sane default is chosen where alternatives are possible. Policies allow users to deviate from the default behavior.

Tooling: enhancing the experience

The RTT is a very extensible library. When users require an extension, they don't need to write much or any additional code. Tools assist in generating helper libraries for adding user types (type plugins) or user interfaces (service plugins) to the RTT. The generated code is readable and understandable and documented. If required, these can be overriden by hand-written code such that tools in development do not block user development.

Component model: components are simple

RTT 2.0 components are simple to understand and explain. In essence they are stateful input/output systems that offer services to supervisors.

The input/output is offered by means of port based communication between data processing algorithms. An input port receives data, an output port sends data. The algorithms in the component define the transformation from input to output.

Service based communication offers operations such as configuration or task execution. A component always specifies if a service is provided or requested. This allows run-time dependency and system state checking, but also automatic connection/disconnection management which is important in distributed environments.

Components are stateful. They don't just start processing data right away. They can validate their preconditions, be queried for their current state and be started and stopped in a controlled manner. Although there is a standard state machine in each component that regulates these transitions, users can extend these without limitations.

Acceptable Upgrade Path

The first users of RTT 2.0 will be current users, seeing solutions for problems they have today. The upgrade path will be documented and assistive tools will be provided. Whenever possible, backwards compatibility is maintained.

Interoperability

The field knows a number of succesful robotics frameworks, languages and operating systems. RTT 2.0 is designed to allow bridges to these components.

Other frameworks

RTT 2.0 can easily interoperate with other robotics frameworks that provide the concepts of port based data flow communication and functional services.

Other languages

RTT 2.0 offers the 1.x real-time scripting language, but in addition binds to other languages as well. A real-time language binding to Lua is offered. Not real-time bindings are offered over a CORBA language independent interface.

Other operating systems

RTT 2.0 runs on Linux, RTAI, Xenomai, Mac OS-X and Windows. These are the main operating systems of the current advanced robotics domain.

Robustness

Complex systems are hard to startup, shutdown or to recover from disfunctional components. RTT 2.0 aids the system architect in maintaining a robust machine controller, even in distributed setups.

Service oriented architectures

Components are aware of the available services and have chance to execute fall-back scenarios when they disappear. They are notified in time such that they can take proper action and recover and resume when a service becomes available again. Local and global supervisors keep track of these state changes such that such mechanisms do not need to be hard-coded into each component.

Separation between real-time and not real-time processes

A real-time component can not be disturbed due to the addition of a lower priority communicating peer. This allows to build systems incrementally around a hard-realtime core. The RTT decouples the communication between sender and receiver and allows real-time data transports to assure delivery.

Contribute! Which weakness have you detected in RTT?

INTRODUCTION

You can edit this page to post your contribution to OrocosRTT 2.0. Please, keep your comment concise and clear: if you want to launch a long debate, you can still use the Developers Forum! Short examples can help other people understanding what you mean.


A) According to the section 4. of the Orocos Component Builder's Manual, the callback of a synchronous event is executed inside the thread of the event's emitter. Imagine that TaskA emits an event, and TaskB, who subscribes synchronously to it, has an handle with a infinite loop: the behavior of TaskA would be jeopardize. Keep in mind that:
  • TaskA hasn't any clue to know what will happen inside the callback of TaskB.
  • It can't prevent TaskB from connecting synchronously.
  • Once blocked, there is nothing it can do.

B) What would happen if a TaskContext is attached to a PeriodicActivity, but internally it was designed to run as a NonPeriodicActivity. What would happen if a sensor with a refresh rate of 10 Hz is read from a Component deployed at 1000 Hz? May be the Activity of the TC should be defined by the TC itself, even if this would mean to have it is hard-coded in the TC.
C) Because of single thread serialization, we can have that a sleep in 1 Task, affect other tasks which are not aware and are not responsible of it. See the source code in the sub page.

Problems with single thread serialization

Because of single thread serialization, something unexpected for the programmer happens.

1) You expect TaskA to be independent from TaskB, but it isn't. If you think it is a problem of resources of the computer, change the activity frequency of 1 of the two tasks.

Suggestion: A) let the programmer choose if single thread serialization is used or not. B) keep 1 thread for 1 activity policy for default. It will help less experienced user to avoid common errors. Experienced user can decide to "unleash" the power of STS if they want to.

2) after the "block" for 0.5 seconds, the "lost cycles" are executed all at once. In other words, updateHook is called 5 times in a row. This may have very umpredictable results. It could be desirable for some applications (filter with data buffer) or catastrophic in other applications (motion control loop).

Suggestion: C) let the user decide if the "lost cycles" or the PeriodicActivity need to be executed later or are defenitively lost.

using namespace std;
using namespace RTT;
using namespace Orocos;
 
TimeService::ticks _timestamp;
double getTime() { return TimeService::Instance()->getSeconds(_timestamp); }
 
class TaskA
    : public TaskContext
{
protected:
     PeriodicActivity act1;
public:
 
    TaskA(std::string name)
    : TaskContext(name),
      act1(1, 0.10, this->engine() )
    {
     //Start the component's activity:
    this->start();
    }  
    void updateHook()
    {
    printf("TaskA  [%.2f] Loop\n", getTime());
    }
};
 
class TaskB
    : public TaskContext
{
protected:
    int num_cycles;
    PeriodicActivity act2;
public:
     TaskB(std::string name)
    : TaskContext(name),
      act2(2, 0.10, this->engine() )
    {
    num_cycles = 0;            
    //Start the component's activity:
    this->start();
    }   
    void updateHook()
    {
    num_cycles++;
    printf("TaskB  [%.2f] Loop\n", getTime());
 
    // once every 20 cycles (2 seconds), a long calculation is done
    if(num_cycles%20 == 0)
    {
        printf("TaskB  [%.2f] before calling long calculation\n", getTime());
 
        // calculation takes longer than expected (0.5 seconds). 
        // it could be something "unexpected", desired or even a bug... 
        // it would not be relevant for this example.
        for(int i=0; i<500; i++) usleep(1000);
 
        printf("TaskB  [%.2f] after calling long calculation\n", getTime());
    }
    }
};
 
int ORO_main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    TaskA    tA("TaskA");
    TaskB    tB("TaskB");
 
    // notice: the task has not been connected. there isn't any relationship between them.
    // In the mind of the programmer, any of them is independent, because they have their own activity.
 
    // if one of the two frequency of the PeriodicActivities is changed, there isn't any problem, since they go on 2 separate threads.  
    getchar();
    return 0;
}

Contribute! Suggest a new feature to be included in RTT 2.0.

INTRODUCTION

Please be concise and provide a short example and your motivation to include it in RTT. Ask first yourself:

  • "Am I the only beneficiary of this new feature?"
  • "Can this feature be obtained with a simple layer on the top of RTT ?"

If you answered "no" to both the questions and you have already debated the new future in the Developers forum, please post here your suggestion.

Create Reference Application Architectures

In order to lower the learning curve, people are requesting often complete application examples which demonstrate well known application architectures such as kinematic robot control, application configuration from a central database or topic based data flow topologies.

1 Central Property Service (ROS like) This tasks sets up components such that they get the system wide configuration from a dedicated property server. The property server loads an XML file with all the values and other components query these values. Advanced components even extend the property server at places. A GUI is not included in this work package.

2 Universal Robot Controller (Using KDL, OCL, standard components) This application has a robot component to represent the robot hardware, a controller for joint space and cartesian space and a path planner. Users can start from this reference application to control their own robotic platform. A GUI is not included in this work package.

3 Topic based data flow (ROS and CORBA EventService like) A deployer can configure components as such that their ports are connected to 'global' topics for sending and receiving. This is similar to what many existing frameworks do today and may demonstrate how compatibility with these frameworks can be accomplished.

4 GUI communication with Orocos How a remote GUI could connect to a running application.

Please add yours

Detailed Roadmap

These pages outline the roadmap for RTT-2.0 in 2009. We aim to have a release candidate by december 2009, with the release following in januari 2010.

  • A work package is divided in tasks with deliverables.
  • All deliverables are public and are made public without delay.
  • All development is done in git repositories.
  • For each change committed to the local git repository, that change is committed to a public repository hosted at github.com within 24 hours.
  • For each task and at the end of each work package, all unit tests are expected to pass. In case additional unit tests are required for a work package, these are listed explicitly as deliverables.
  • The order of execution of tasks within a work package is suggestive and may differ from the actual order.
  • In case a task modifies the RTT API or structure, the task's deliverable implicitly includes the adaption to aforementioned modifications of following parts of OCL: CMake Build system; directories: taskbrowser, deployment, ocl, hardware, reporting, helloworld, timer, doc, debian.
  • These changes are collected in the ocl-2.0 git repository.
  • When the form of a deliverable is 'Patch set', this is equivalent to one or more commits on the public git repository.

WP1 RTT Cleanup

This work package contains structural clean-ups for the RTT source code, such as CMake build system, portability and making the public interface slimmer and explicit. RTT 2.0 is an ideal mark point for doing such changes. Most of these reorganizations have broad support from the community. This package is put up front because it allows early adopters to switch only at the beginning to the new code structure and that all subsequent packages are executed in the new structure.

Links : (various posts on Orocos mailing lists)

Allocated Work : 15 days

Tasks:

1.1 Partition in name spaces and hide internal classes in subdirectories.

A namespace and directory partitioning will once and for all separate public RTT API from internal headers. This will provide a drastically reduced class count for users, while allowing developers to narrow backwards compatibility to only these classes. This offers also the opportunity to remove classes that are for internal use only but are in fact never used.

Deliverable Title Form
1.1.1 Internal headers are in subdirectories Patch set
1.1.2 Internal classes are in nested namespaces of the RTT namespace Patch set

1.2 Improve CMake build system

Numerous suggestions have been done on the mailing list for improving portability and building Orocos on non standard platforms.

Deliverable Title Form
1.2.1 Standardized on CMake 2.6 Patch set
1.2.2 Use CMake lists instead of strings Patch set
1.2.3 No more use of Linux specific include paths Patch set
1.2.4 Separate finding from using libraries for all RTT dependencies Patch set

1.3 Group user contributed code in rtt/extras.

This directory offers variants of implementations found in the RTT, such as new data type support, specialized activity classes etc. In order not to clutter up the standard RTT API, these contributions are organized in a separate directory. Users are warned that these extras might not be of the same quality as native RTT classes.

Deliverable Title Form
1.3.1 Orocos rtt-extras directory Directory in RTT

1.4 Improve portability

Some GNU/GCC/Linux specific constructs have entered the source code, which makes maintenance on and portability to other platforms a harder task. To structurally support other platforms, the code will be compiled with another compiler (non-gnu) and a build flag ORO_NO_ATOMICS (or similar) is added to exclude all compiler and assembler specific code and replace it with ISO-C/C++ or RTT-FOSI compliant constructs.

Deliverable Title Form
1.4.1 Code compiles on non-gnu compiler Patch set
1.4.2 Code compiles without assembler constructs Patch set

1.5 Default to activity with one thread per component

The idea is to provide each component with a robust default activity object which maps to exactly one thread. This thread can periodically execute or be non periodic. The user can switch between these modes at configuration or run-time.

Deliverable Title Form
1.5.1 Generic Activity class which is by default present in every component. Patch set
1.5.2 Unit test for this class Patch set

1.6 Standardize on Boost Unit Testing Framework

Before the other work packages are started, the RTT must standardize on a unit test framework. Until now, this is the CppUnit framework. The more portable and configurable Boost UTF has been chosen for unit testing of RTT 2.0.

Deliverable Title Form
1.6.1 CppUnit removed and Boost UTF in place Patch set

1.7 Provide CMake macros for applications and components

When users want to build Orocos components or applications, they require flags and settings from the installed RTT and OCL libraries. A CMake macro which gathers these flags for compiling an Orocos component or application is provided. This is inspired on how ROS components are compiled.

Deliverable Title Form
1.7.1 CMake macro CMake macro file
1.7.2 Unit test that tests this macro Patch set

1.8 Allow lock-free policies to be configured

Some RTT classes use hard-coded lock-free algorithms, which may be in the way (due to resource restrictions) for some embedded systems. It should be possible to change the policy to not use a lock-free algorithm in that class (cfr the 'strategy' design pattern'). An example is the use of AtomicQueue in the CommandProcessor.

Deliverable Title Form
1.8.1 Allow to set/override lock-free algorithm policy patch

CMake Rework

This page collects all the data and links used to improve the CMake build system, such that you can find quick links inhere instead of scrolling through the forum.

Thread on Orocos-dev : http://www.orocos.org/node/1073 (in case you like to scroll)

CMake manual on how to use and create Findxyz macros : http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/CMake:How_To_Find_Libraries

List of many alternative modules : http://zi.fi/cmake/Modules/

An alternative solution for users of RTT and OCL is installing the Orocos-RTT-target-config.cmake macros, which serve a similar purpose as the pkgconfig .pc files: they accumulate the flags used to build the library. This may be a solution for Windows systems. Also, CMake suggests that .pc files are only 'suggestive' and that still the standard CMake macros must be used to fully capture and store all information of the dependency you're looking at.

Directories and namespace rework

The orocos/src directory reflects the /usr/include/rtt directory structure, I'll post it here from the user's point of view, so what she finds in the include dir:

Abbrevs: (N)BC: (No) Backwards Compatibility guaranteed between 2.x.0 and 2.y.0. Backwards compatibility is always guaranteed between 2.x.y and 2.x.z. In case of NBC, a class might disappear or change, as long as it is not a base class of a BC qualified class.

Directory Namespace BC/NBC Comments Header File list
rtt/*.hpp RTT BC Public API: maintains BC, a limited set of classes and interfaces. This is the most important list to get right. A header not listed in here goes into one of the subdirectories. Please add/complete/remove. TaskContext.hpp Activity.hpp SequentialActivity.hpp SlaveActivity.hpp DataPort.hpp BufferPort.hpp Method.hpp Command.hpp Event.hpp Property.hpp PropertyBag.hpp Attribute.hpp Time.hpp Timer.hpp Logger.hpp
rtt/plugin/*.hpp RTT::plugin BC All plugin creation and loading stuff. Plugin.hpp
rtt/types/*.hpp RTT::types BC All type system stuff (depends partially on plugin). Everything you (or a tool) need(s) to add your own types to the RTT. Toolkit.hpp ToolkitPlugin.hpp Types.hpp TypeInfo.hpp TypeInfoName.hpp TypeStream.hpp TypeStream-io.hpp VectorComposition.hpp TemplateTypeInfo.hpp Operators.hpp OperatorTypes.hpp BuildType.hpp
rtt/interface/*.hpp RTT::interface BC Most interfaces/base classes used by classes in the RTT namespace. ActionInterface.hpp, ActivityInterface.hpp, OperationInterface.hpp, PortInterface.hpp, RunnableInterface.hpp, BufferInterface.hpp
rtt/internal/*.hpp RTT::internal NBC Supportive classes that don't fit another category but are definately not for users to use directly. ExecutionEngine.hpp CommandProcessor.hpp DataSource*.hpp Command*.hpp Buffer*.hpp Function*.hpp *Factory*.hpp Condition*.hpp Local*.hpp EventC.hpp MethodC.hpp CommandC.hpp
rtt/scripting/*.hpp RTT::scripting NBC Users should not include these directly.
rtt/extras/*.hpp RTT::extras BC Alternative implementations of certain interfaces in the RTT namespace. May contain stuff useful for embedded or other specific use cases.
rtt/dev/*.hpp RTT::dev BC Minimal Device Interface, As-is in RTT 1.x AnalogInInterface.hpp AnalogOutInterface.hpp AxisInterface.hpp DeviceInterface.hpp DigitalInput.hpp DigitalOutput.hpp EncoderInterface.hpp PulseTrainGeneratorInterface.hpp AnalogInput.hpp AnalogOutput.hpp CalibrationInterface.hpp DigitalInInterface.hpp DigitalOutInterface.hpp DriveInterface.hpp HomingInterface.hpp SensorInterface.hpp
rtt/corba/*.hpp RTT::corba BC CORBA transport files. Users include some headers, some not. Should this also have the separation between rtt/corba and rtt/corba/internal ? I would rename the IDL modules to RTT::corbaidl in order to clear out compiler/doxygen confusion. Also note that current 1.x namespace is RTT::Corba.
rtt/property/*.hpp RTT::property BC Formerly 'rtt/marsh'. Marshalling and loading classes for properties. CPFDemarshaller.hpp CPFDTD.hpp CPFMarshaller.hpp
rtt/dlib/*.hpp RTT::dlib BC As-is static distribution library files. They are actually a form of 'extras'. Maybe they belong in there... DLibCommand.hpp
rtt/boost/*.hpp boost ? We'll try to get rid of this in 2.x
rtt/os/*.hpp RTT::OS BC As-is. (Rename to RTT::os ?) Atomic.hpp fosi_internal_interface.hpp MutexLock.hpp rt_list.hpp StartStopManager.hpp threads.hpp CAS.hpp MainThread.hpp oro_allocator.hpp rtconversions.hpp rtstreambufs.hpp Semaphore.hpp Thread.hpp Time.hpp fosi_internal.hpp Mutex.hpp OS.hpp rtctype.hpp rtstreams.hpp ThreadInterface.hpp
rtt/targets/* - BC We need this for allowing to install multiple -dev versions (-gnulinux+-xenomai for example) in the same directory. rtt-target.h <target>

Will go: 'rtt/impl' and 'rtt/boost'.

Open question to be answered: Interfaces like ActivityInterface, PortInterface, RunnableInterface etc. -> Do they go into rtt/, rtt/internal or maybe rtt/interface ?

!!! PLEASE add a LOG MESSAGE when you edit this wiki to motivate your edit !!!

WP2 Data Flow API and Implementation Improvement

Context: Because the current data flow communication primitives in RTT limit the reusability and potential implementations, Sylvan Joyeux proposed a new, but fairly compatible, design. It is intended that this new implementation can almost transparently replace the current code base. Additionally, this package extends the DataFlow transport to support out-of-band real-time communication using Xenomai IPC primitives.

Link : http://www.orocos.org/wiki/rtt/rtt-2.0/dataflow http://www.orocos.org/wiki/rtt/rtt-2.0/dataflow

Estimated work : 45 days for a demonstrable prototype.

Tasks:

2.1 Review and merge proposed code and improve/fix where necessary

Sylvain's code is clean and of high standards, however, it has not been unit tested yet and needs a second look.

Deliverable Title Form
2.1.1 Code reviewed and imported in RTT-2.0 branch Patch set
2.1.2 Unit tests for reading, writing, connecting and disconnecting in-process communication Patch set

2.2 Port CORBA type transport to new code base

Sylvain's code has initial CORBA support. The plan is to cooperate on the implementation and offer the same or better features as the current CORBA implementation does. Also the DataFlowInterface.idl will be cleaned up to reflect the new semantics.

Deliverable Title Form
2.2.1 CORBA enabled data flow between proxies and servers which uses the RTT type system merged on RTT-2.0 branch Patch set
2.3 Allow Real-Time data port access with CORBA Proxy

A disadvantage of the current data port is that ports connected over CORBA may cause stalls when reading or writing them. The Proxy or Server implementation should, if possible, do the communication in the background and not let the other component's task block.

Deliverable Title Form
2.3.1 Event driven network-thread allocated in Proxy code to receive and send data flow samples Patch set
2.4 Reduce footprint of data connections

The current lock-free data connections allocate memory for allowing access by 16 threads, even if only two threads connect. One solution is to let the allocated memory grow with the number of connections, such that no more memory is allocated than necessary.

Deliverable Title Form
2.4.1 Let lock-free data object and buffer memory grow proportional to connected ports Patch set
2.5 Out of band data flow review

It is often argued that CORBA is excellent for setting up and configuring services, but not for continuous data transmission. There are for example CORBA standards that only mediate setup interfaces but leave the data communication connections up to the implementation. This task looks at how ROS and other frameworks set up out-of band data flow and how such a client-server architecture can be added to RTT/CORBA.

Deliverable Title Form
2.5.1 Report on out of band implementations and similarities to RTT. Email on Orocos-dev
2.6 Create automatic marshalling of user types

Since the out-of-band communication will require objects to be transformed to a byte stream and back, a marshalling system must be in place. The idea is to let the user specify his data types as IDL structs (or equivalent) and to generate a toolkit from that definition. The toolkit will re-use the generated CORBA marshalling/demarshalling code to provide this service to the out-of-band communication channels.

Deliverable Title Form
2.6.1 Marshalling/demarshalling in toolkits Patch set
2.6.2 Tool to convert data specification into toolkit Executable
2.7 Create out-of-band data flow communication

The first communication mechanism to support is data flow. This will be demonstrated with a Xenomai RTPIPE implementation (or equivalent) which is setup between a network of components.

Deliverable Title Form
2.7.1 Real-time inter-process communication of data flow values on Xenomai Patch set
2.7.2 Unit test for setting up, connecting and validating Real-Time properties of data ports in RT IPC setting. Patch set
2.8 Update documentation and Examples

In compliance with modern programming art, the unit tests should always test and pass the implementation. Documentation and Examples are provided for the users and complement the unit tests.

Deliverable Title Form
2.8.1 Unit tests updated Patch set
2.8.2 rtt-examples, rtt-exercises updated Patch set
2.8.3 orocos-corba manual updated Patch set

2.9 Organize and Port OCL deployment, reporting and taskbrowsing

RTT 2.0 data ports will require a coordinated action from all OCL component maintainers to port and test the components to OCL 2.0 in order to use the new data ports. This work package is only concerned with the upgrading of the Deployment, Reporting and TaskBrowser components.

Deliverable Title Form
2.9.1 Deployment, Reporting and TaskBrowser updated Patch set

WP3 Method / Message / Event Unified API

Context: Commands are too complex for both users and framework/transport implementers. However, current day-to-day use confirms the usability of an asynchronous and thread-safe messaging mechanism. It was proposed to reduce the command API to a message API and unify the synchronous / asynchronous relation between methods and messages with synchronous / asynchronous events. This will lead to simpler implementations, simpler usage scenarios and reduced concepts in the RTT.

The registration and connection API of these primitives also falls under this WP.

Link: http://www.orocos.org/wiki/rtt/rtt-2.0/executionflow

Estimated work : 55 days for a demonstrable prototype.

Tasks:

3.1 Provide a real-time memory allocator for messages

In contrast to commands, each message invocation leads to a new message sent to the receiver. This requires heap management from a real-time memory allocator, such as the highly recommended TLSF (Two-Level Segregate Fit) allocator, which must be integrated in the RTT code base. If the RTOS provides, the native RTOS memory allocator is used, such as in Xenomai.

Deliverable Title Form
3.1.1 Real-time allocation integrated in RTT-2.0 Patch set

3.2 Message implementation

Unit test and implement the new Message API for use in C++ and scripts. This implies a MessageProcessor (replaces CommandProcessor), a 'messages()' interface and using it in scripting.

Deliverable Title Form
3.2.1 Message implementation for C++ Patch set
3.2.2 Message implementation for Scripting Patch set

3.3 Demote the Command implementation

Commands (as they are now) become second rang because they don't appear in the interface anymore, being replaced by messages. Users may still build Command objects at the client side both in C++ as in scripting. The need for and the plausibility of identical functionality with today's Command objects is yet to be investigated.

Deliverable Title Form
3.3.1 Client side C++ Command construction Patch set
3.3.2 Client side scripting command creation Patch set

3.4 Unify the C++ Event API with Method/Message semantics

Events today duplicate much of method/command functionality, because they also allow synchronous / asynchronous communication between components. It is the intention to replace much of the implementation with interfaces to methods and messages and let events cause Methods to be called or Messages to be sent. This change will remove the EventProcessor, which will be replaced by the MessageProcessor. This will greatly simplify the event API and semantics for new users. Another change is that allowing calling Events on the component's interface can only be done by means of registering it as a method or message.

Deliverable Title Form
3.4.1 Connection of only Method/Message objects to events Patch set
3.4.2 Adding events as methods or messages to the TaskContext interface. Patch set

3.5 Allow event delivery policies

Adding a callback to an event puts a burden on the event emitter. The owner of the event must be allowed to impose a policy on the event such that this burden can be bounded. One such policy can be that all callbacks must be executed outside the thread of the owning component. This task is to extend the RTT such that it contains such a policy.

Deliverable Title Form
3.5.1 Allow to set the event delivery policy for each component Patch set

3.6 Allow to specify requires interfaces

Today one can connect data ports automatically because both providing and requiring data is presented in the interface. This is not so for methods, messages or events. This task makes it possible to describe which of these primitives a component requires from a peer such that they can be automatically connected during application deployment. The required primitives are grouped in interfaces, such that they can be connected as a group from provider to requirer.

Deliverable Title Form
3.6.1 Mechanism to list the requires interface of a component Patch set
3.6.2 Feature to connect interfaces in deployment component. Patch set

3.7 Improve and create Method/Message CORBA API

With the experience of the RTT 1.0 IDL API, the existing API is improved to reduce the danger of memory leaks and allow easier access to Orocos components when using only the CORBA IDL. The idea is to remove the Method and Command interfaces and change the create methods in CommandInterface and MethodInterface to execute functions.

Deliverable Title Form
3.7.1 Simplify CORBA API Patch set

3.8 Port new Event mechanism to CORBA

Since the new Event mechanism will seamlessly integrate with the Method/Message API, a CORBA port, which allows remote components to subscribe to component events must be straightforward to make.

Deliverable Title Form
3.8.1 CORBA idl and implementation for using events. Patch set

3.9 Update documentation, unit tests and Examples

In compliance with modern programming art, the unit tests should always test and pass the implementation. Documentation and Examples are provided for the users and complement the unit tests.

Deliverable Title Form
3.9.1 Unit tests updated Patch set
3.9.2 rtt-examples, rtt-exercises updated Patch set
3.9.3 Orocos component builders manual updated Patch set

3.10 Organize and Port OCL deployment, taskbrowsing

The new RTT 2.0 execution API will require a coordinated action from all OCL component maintainers to port and test the components to OCL 2.0 in order to use the new primitives. This work package is only concerned with the upgrading of the Deployment, Reporting and TaskBrowser components.

Deliverable Title Form
3.10.1 Deployment, Reporting and TaskBrowser updated Patch set

WP4 Create Reference Application Architecture

In order to lower the learning curve, people are requesting often complete application examples which demonstrate well known application architectures such as kinematic robot control. This work package fleshes out that example.

Links : (various posts on Orocos mailing lists)

Estimated Work : 5 days for the application architecture with documentation

Tasks:

4.1 Universal Robot Controller (Using KDL, OCL, standard components)

This application has a robot component to represent the robot hardware, a controller for joint space and cartesian space and a path planner. Users can start from this reference application to control their own robotic platform. Both axes and end effector can be controlled in position and velocity mode. A state machine switches between these modes. A GUI is not included in this work package.

Deliverable Title Form
4.1.1 Robot Controller example tar ball

Full distribution support

There are two major changes required in the CORBA IDL interface.

  1. A new interface for attaching callbacks to events in the component
  2. A rewrite of the
    1. DataFlowInterface,
    2. MethodInterface,
    3. CommandInterface / MessageInterface.

The first point will be relatively straight forward, as events attach methods and messages, which will be represented in the CORBA interface as well.

The DataFlowInterface will be adapted to reflect the rework on the new Data flow api. Much will depend on the out-of-band or through-CORBA nature of the data flow.

The MethodInterface should no longer work with 'session' objects, and all calls are related to the main interface, such that a method object can be freed after invocation.

The CommandInterface might be removed, in case it can be 'reconstructed' from lower level primitives. A MessageInterface will replace it which allows to send messages, analogous to the exiting MethodInterface.

The 'ControlTask' interface will remain mostly as is, extended with events() and messages().

RTT 2.0.0-beta1

This page is for helping you understand what's in RTT/OCL 2.0.0-beta1 release and what's not.

Caveats

First the bad things:
  • Do not use this release on real machines !
  • There are *no* guarantees for real-time operation yet.
  • CORBA transport does not work yet and needs to change drastically
  • The API is 'pretty' stable, but the transport rework might have influences. This release will certainly not be binary compatible with the final 2.0.0 release.
  • OCL has not completely catched up, and also needs to be restructured further into a leaner repository.
  • Do not manually upgrade your code ! Use the rtt2-converter script found on this site first.
  • RTT::Command is gone ! See Replacing Commands
  • RTT::Event is gone ! See Replacing Events
  • Reacting to Operations (former Event) is not yet possible in state machine scripts.
  • RTT::DataPort,BufferPort etc are gone ! See RTT 2.0 Data Flow Ports
  • In case you have patches on the orocos-rtt source tree, all files have moved drastically. First all went into rtt/ instead of src/. Next, all non-API files went into subdirectories.

For all upgrade-related notes, see Upgrading from RTT 1.x to 2.0

Missing things

The final release will have these, but this one has not:
  • A plugin system in RTT to load types (type kits) and plugins (like scripting, marshalling,...)
  • A tool/workflow to create type kits automatically
  • A working CORBA transport
  • RT-Logging framework
  • Service deployment in the DeploymentComponent
  • Misc fixes/minor feature additions and better documentation
  • Repackaged OCL tree. Especially, in OCL, only TaskBrowser, Reporting and DeploymentComponent are fully operational.
  • Debian packages have not been updated yet
  • A couple of unit tests still fail. You should see at the end:

88% tests passed, 3 tests failed out of 25
 
The following tests FAILED:
          6 - mqueue-test (Failed)
         19 - types_test (Failed)
         22 - function_test (Failed)

New Features

Updated Examples and Documentation

Most documentation (manuals and online API reference) is up-to-date, but sometimes a bit rough or lacking illustrations. The rtt-exercises have been upgraded to support RTT 2.0 API.

New style Data Ports

The data flow ports have been reworked to allow far more flexible component development and system deployment. Details are at RTT 2.0 Data Flow Ports. Motivation can be found at Redesign of the data flow interface

Improved TaskBrowser

Allows you to declare new variables, shows what a component requires and provides and if these interfaces are connected.

Improved Deployment

Specify port connection properties using XML, connect provided to required services.

Improved Reporting

Data flow logs are now sample based, such that you can trace the flow and state of connections.

Method vs Operation

The RTT 1.x Method, Command and Event APIs have been removed and replaced by Method/Operation. Details are at Methods vs Operations

Real-Time Allocation

RTT includes a copy of the TLSF library for supporting places where real-time allocation is beneficial. The RT-Logger infrastructure and the Method/Operation infrastructure take advantage of this. Normal users won't use this feature directly.

A real-time MQueue transport

Data flow between processes is now possible in real-time. The real-time MQueue transport allows to transport data between processes using Posix MQueues as well as in Xenomai.

For each type to be transported using the MQueue transport, a separate transport typekit must be available (this may change in the final 2.0 release).

Simplified API

Creating a component has been greatly simplified and the amount of code to write reduced to the absolute minimum. Documentation of operations or ports is now optional. Attributes and properties can be added by using a plain C++ class variable, the need to specify templates has been removed in some places.

Services

Component interfaces are now defined as services and a component can 'provide' or 'require' a service. These tools can be used to connect methods to operations at run-time without the necessary lookup code. For example:
 Method<bool(int,int)> setreso;
 setreso = this->getPeer("Camera")->getMethod<bool(int,int)>("setResolution");
 if ( setreso.ready() == false )
    log(Error) << "Could not find setResolution Method." <<endlog();
 else
    setreso(640,480);
becomes:
 Method<bool(int,int)> setreso("setResolution");
 this->requires("Camera")->addMethod(mymethod);
 
 // Deployment component will setup setResolution for us...
 setreso(640,480);

RTT 2.0.0-beta2

This page is for helping you understand what's in RTT/OCL 2.0.0-beta2 release and what's not.

See the RTT 2.0.0-beta1 page for the notes of the previous beta, these will not be repeated here.

Caveats

Like in any beta, first the bad things:
  • Do not use this release on real machines !
  • There are *no* guarantees for real-time operation yet.
  • The API is 'pretty' stable, but the type system rework might have influences, especially on RTT 2.0 typekits (aka RTT 1.0 toolkits). This release will certainly not be binary compatible with the final 2.0.0 release.
  • Do not manually upgrade your code ! Use the rtt2-converter script found on this site first.
  • Reacting to Operations (former Event) is not yet possible in state machine scripts.
  • This release requires CMAKE 2.6-patch3 or later

For all upgrade-related notes, see Upgrading from RTT 1.x to 2.0

Missing things

The final release will have these, but this one has not:
  • A plugin system in RTT to load types (type kits) and plugins (like scripting, marshalling,...)
  • A tool/workflow to create type kits automatically
  • RT-Logging framework
  • Service deployment in the DeploymentComponent
  • Misc fixes/minor feature additions and better documentation
  • Repackaged OCL tree. Especially, in OCL, only TaskBrowser, Reporting and DeploymentComponent are fully operational.
  • Debian packages have not been updated yet
  • A couple of unit tests still fail. You should see at the end:

97% tests passed, 1 tests failed out of 31
 
The following tests FAILED:
         24 - types_test (Failed)
If other tests fail, this may be because of too strict timing checks, but you can report them anyway on the orocos-dev mailing list or rtt-dev website forum.

New Features

See the RTT 2.0.0-beta1 page for the features added in beta1. Most features below relate to the CORBA transport.

Feature compatibility with RTT 1.x

This release is able to build the same type of applications as with RTT 1.x. It may be rough on the edges, but no big chunks of functionality (or unit tests) have been left out.

Updated CORBA IDL

Want to use an Orocos component from another language or computer ? The simplified CORBA IDL gives quick access to all properties, operations and ports.

Transparent remote or inter-process communication

The corba::TaskContextProxy and corba::TaskContextServer allow fully transparant communication between components, providing the same semantics as in-process communication. The full TaskContext C++ api is available in IDL.

Improved memory usage and reduced bandwidth/callbacks

Calling an operation, setting a parameter, all these tasks are done with a single call from client to server. No callbacks from server to client are done as in RTT 1.x. This saves a lot of memory on both client and server side and eliminates virtually all memory leaks related to the CORBA transport.

Adapted OCL components

TaskBrowser and (Corba)Deployment code is fully operational and feature-equivalent to RTT 1.x. One can deploy Orocos components using a CORBA deployer and connect to them using other deployers or taskbrowsers.

RTT and OCL Cleanup

This work package claims all remaining proposed clean-ups for the RTT source code. RTT 2.0 is an ideal mark point for doing such changes. Most of these reorganizations have broad support from the community.

1 Partition in name spaces and hide internal classes in subdirectories. A namespace and directory partitioning will once and for all separate public RTT API from internal headers. This will provide a drastically reduced class count for users, while allowing developers to narrow backwards compatibility to only these classes. This offers also the opportunity to remove classes that are for internal use only but are in fact never used.

2 Improve CMake build system Numerous suggestions have been done on the mailing list for improving portability and building Orocos on non standard platforms.

3 Group user contributed code in rtt-extras and ocl-extras packages. These packages offer variants of implementations found in the RTT and OCL, such as new data type support, specialized activity classes etc. In order not to clutter up the standard RTT and OCL APIs, these contributions are organized in separate packages. Other users are warned that these extras might not be of the same quality as native RTT and OCL classes.

Real time logging

Recent ML posts indicate the desire for a real-time (RT) capable logging framework, to supplement/replace the existing non-RT RTT::Logger. See http://www.orocos.org/forum/rtt/rtt-dev/logging-replacement for details.

NB Work in progress. Feedback welcomed

See https://www.fmtc.be/bugzilla/orocos/show_bug.cgi?id=708 for progress and patches.

Initial requirements

Approximately in order of priority (in my mind at least)

0) Completely disable all logging

1) Able log variable sized string messages

2) Able log from non-realtime and realtime code

3) Minimize (as reasonably practicable) the effect on runtime performance (eg minimize CPU cycles consumed)

4) Support different log levels

5) Support different "storage mediums" (ie able to log messages to file, to socket, to stdout)

Except for 3, and the "realtime" part of 2, the above is the functionality of the existing RTT::Logger

6) Support different log levels within a deployed system (ie able to log debug in one area, and info in another)

7) Support multiple storage mediums simultaneously at runtime

8) Runtime configuration of storage mediums and logging levels

9) Allow the user to extend the possible storage mediums at deployment-time (ie user can provide new storage class)

Optional IMHO

10) Support nested diagnostic contexts [1] [2] (a more advanced version of the Logger::In() that RTT's logger currently supports)

Logging framework

I see 3 basic choices, all of which are log4j ports (none of which support real-time right now)
  1. log4cplus - does not appear to be maintained.
  2. log4cxx - Apache license, well maintained, large, up to date functionality, heavy dependancies (APR, etc)
  3. log4cpp - LGPL license, moderately maintained, medium size, fairly up to date (re log4j and logbook), no dependancies

I prefer 3) as it has the basic functionality we need, is license compatible, has a good design, and we've been offered developer access to modify it. I also think modifying a slightly less-well-known framework will be easier than getting some of our mod's in to log4cxx.

NOTE on the ML I was using the logback term logger, but log4cpp calls it a category. I am switching to category from now on!

Preliminary design

Add TLSF to RTT (a separate topic).

Fundamentally, replace std::string, wrap one class, and override two functions. :-)

Typedef/template in a real-time string to the logging framework, instead of std::string (also any std::map, etc).

Create an OCL::Category class derived from log4cpp::Category. Add an (optionally null) association to an RTT::BufferDataPort< log4cpp::LoggingEvent > (which uses rt_strings internally). Override the callAppenders() function to push to the port instead of directly calling appenders.

Modify the getCategory() function in the hierarchy maintainer to return our OCL:: Category instead of log4cpp::category. Alternatively, leave it producing log4cpp::category but contain that within the OCL::Category object (has-a instead of is-a relationship, in OO speak). The alternative is less modification to log4cpp, but worse performance and potentially more wrapping code.

Deployment

I have a working prototype of the OCL deployment for this (without the actual logging though), and it is really ugly. As in Really Ugly! To simplify the format and number of files involved, and reduce duplication, I suggest extending the OCL deployer to better support logging.

Sample system

Component C1 - uses category org.me.myapp
Component C2 - uses category org.me.myapp.c2
 
Appender A - console
Appender B - file
Appender C - serial
 
Logger org.me.myapp has level=info and appender A
Logger org.me.myapp.C2 has level=debug and appenders B, C

Configuration file for log4cpp

log4j.logger.org.me.myapp=info, AppA
log4j.logger.org.me.myapp.C2=debug, AppB, AppC
 
 
log4j.appender.AppA=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.AppB=org.apache.log4j.FileAppender
log4j.appender.AppC=org.apache.log4j.SerialAppender
 
# AppA uses PatternLayout.
log4j.appender.AppA.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.AppA.layout.ConversionPattern=%-4r [%t] %-5p %c %x - %m%n
# AppB uses SimpleLayout.
log4j.appender.AppB.layout=org.apache.log4j.SimpleLayout
# AppC uses PatternLayout with a different pattern from AppA
log4j.appender.AppC.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.AppC.layout.ConversionPattern=%d [%t] %-5p %c %x - %m%n

One possible Orocos XML deployer configuration

File: AppDeployer.xml

<struct name="ComponentC1" 
    ... />
<struct name="ComponentC2" 
    ... />
 
<struct name="AppenderA" type="ocl::ConsoleAppender"> 
    <simple name="PropertyFile" ...><value>AppAConfig.cpf</value></simple>
    <struct name="Peers"> <simple>Logger</simple>
</struct>
 
<struct name="AppenderB" type="ocl::FileAppender"> 
    <simple name="PropertyFile" ... />
    <struct name="Peers"> <simple>Logger</simple>
</struct>
 
<struct name="AppenderC" type="ocl::SerialAppender"> 
    <simple name="PropertyFile" ... />
    <struct name="Peers"> <simple>Logger</simple>
</struct>
 
<struct name="Logger" type="ocl::Logger"> 
    <simple name="PropertyFile" ...><value>logger.org.me.myapp.cpf</value></simple>
</struct>

File: AppAConfig.cpf

<properties>
  <simple name="LayoutClass" type="string"><value>ocl.PatternLayout</value>
  <simple name="LayoutConversionPattern" type="string"><value>%-4r [%t] %-5p %c %x - %m%n</value>
</properties>

… other appender .cpf files …

File: logger.org.me.myapp.cpf

<properties>
    <struct name="Categories" type="PropertyBag">
        <simple name="org.me.myapp" type="string"><value>info</value></simple>
        <simple name="org.me.myapp.C2" type="string"><value>debug</value></simple>
    </struct>
    <struct name="Appenders" type="PropertyBag">
        <simple name="org.me.myapp" type="string"><value>AppenderA</value></simple>
        <simple name="org.me.myapp.C2" type="string"><value>AppenderB</value></simple>
        <simple name="org.me.myapp.C2" type="string"><value>AppenderC</value></simple>
    </struct>
</properties>

The logger component is no more than a container for ports. Why special case this? Simply to make life easier for the deployer and to keep the deployer syntax and semantic model similar to what it currently is. A deployer deploys components - the only real special casing here is the connecting of ports (by the logger code) that aren't mentioned in the deployment file. If you use the existing deployment approach, you have to create a component per category, and mention the port in both the appenders and the category. This is what I currently have, and as I said, it is Really Ugly.

Example logger functionality (error checking elided)

Logger::configureHook()
 
    // create a port for each category with an appender
    for each appender in property bag
        find existing category
        if category not exist
            create category
            create port
            associate port with category
        find appender component
        connect category port with appender port
 
    // configure categories
    for each category in property bag
        if category not exist
            create category
        set category level

Important points

There will probably need to be a restriction that to maintain real-time, categories are found prior to a component being started (e.g. in configureHook() or startHook() ).

Note that not all OCL::Category objects contain a port. Only those category objects with associated appenders actually have a port. This is how the hierarchy works. If you have category "org.me.myapp.1.2.3" and it has no appenders but your log level is sufficient, then the logging action gets passed up the hierarchy. Say that category "org.me.myapp" has an appender (and that no logging level stops this logging action in the hierarchy in between), then that appender will actually log this event.

Also should create toolkit and transport plugins to deal with the log4cpp::LoggingEvent struct. This will allow for remote appenders, as well as viewing within the taskbrowser.

Port names would perhaps be something like "org.me.myapp.C1" => log_org_me_myapp_C1".

Real-Time Strings ?

It's not so much the string that needs to be real-time, but the stringstream, which converts our data (strings, ints,...) into a string buffer. Conveniently, the boost::iostream library allows with two lines of code to create a real-time string stream:

#include <boost/iostreams/device/array.hpp>
#include <boost/iostreams/stream.hpp>
 
namespace io = boost::iostreams;
 
int main()
{
  // prepare static sink
  const int MAX_MSG_LENGTH = 100;
  char sink[MAX_MSG_LENGTH];
  memset( sink, 0, MAX_MSG_LENGTH);
 
  // create 'stringstream' 
  io::stream<io::array_sink>  out(sink);
 
  out << "Hello World! "; // space required to avoid stack smashing abort.
 
  // close and flush stringstream
  out.close();
 
  // re-open from position zero.
  out.open( sink );
 
  // overwrites old data.
  out << "Hello World! ";
}
If user code 'only' uses const& to strings or C-strings, there is no need for rt_string, but for an rt_stringstream. The above code allows to realize that with a statically allocated (and non expandable!) char buffer. Replacing this buffer with a dynamically growing buffer will probably need an rt_string after all.

Unfortunately, the log4cpp::LoggingEvent is passed through RTT buffers, and this has std::string members. So, we need rt_string also, but rt_stringstream will be very useful also.

Warning For anyone using the boost::iostreams like above, either clear the array to 0's first, or ensure you explicitly write the string termination character ('\0'). The out << "..."; statement does not terminate the string otherwise. Also, I did not need the "space ... to avoid stack smashing abort" bit on Snow Leopard with gcc 4.2.1.

Using boost::iostream repeatedly ... you need to reset the stream between each use

#include <boost/iostreams/device/array.hpp>
#include <boost/iostreams/stream.hpp>
#include <boost/iostreams/seek.hpp>
 
namespace io = boost::iostreams;
 
...
 
char            str[500];
io::stream<io::array_sink>    ss(str);
 
ss << "cartPose_desi " << vehicleCartPosition_desi << '\0';
logger->debug(OCL::String(&str[0]));
 
// reset stream before re-using
io::seek(ss, 0, BOOST_IOS::beg);        
ss << "cartPose_meas " << vehicleCartPosition_meas << '\0';
logger->debug(OCL::String(&str[0]));

Problems/Questions/Issues

If before the Logger is configured (and hence, the buffer ports and appender associations are created), a component logs to a category, the logging event is lost. At that time no appenders exist. It also means that for any component that logs prior to configure time, by default, those logging events are lost. I think that this requires further examination, but would likely involve more change to the OCL deployer.

The logger configure code presumes that all appenders already exist. Is this an issue?

Is the port-category association a shared_ptr<port> style, or does the category simply own the port?

If the logger component has the ports added to it as well as to the category, then you could peruse the ports within the taskbrowser. Is this useful? If this is useful, is it worth making the categories and their levels available somehow for perusal within the taskbrowser?

References

[1] http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/apidocs/org/apache/log4j/NDC.html

[2] Patterns for Logging Diagnostic Messages Abstract

[3] log4j and a short introduction to it.

[4] logback - log4j successor

[5] log4cpp

[6] log4cxx

[7] log4cplus

Redesign of the data flow interface

(Copied from http://github.com/doudou/orocos-rtt/commit/dc1947c8c1bdace90cf0a3aa2047ad248619e76b)

  • write ports are now common to all types of connections, and writing is "send and forget"
  • read ports still specify their type (data or buffer). The management of the connection type is offloaded on the port object (i.e. no more an intermediate ConnectionInterface object)
  • the ports maintain a list of "connected" ports. It is therefore possible to do some connection management, i.e. one knows who is listening to what.

Here is the mail that led to this implementation:

The problems

  • the current implementation is not about data connections (getting data flowing from one port to another). It is about managing shared memory places, where different ports read and write. That is quite obvious for the data ports (i.e. there is a shared data sample that anyone can read or write), and is IMO completely meaningless for buffer ports. Buffer ports are really in need of a data flow model (see above a more specific critic about multi-output buffers)
  • Per se, this does not seem a problem. Data is getting transmitted from one port to the other, isn't it ?
Well, actually it is a problem because it forbids a clean connection management implementation. Why ? Because there is no way to know who is reading and who is writing ... Thus, the completely useless disconnect() call. Why useless ? Because if you do: (this is pseudo-code of course)

     connect(source, dest)
     source.disconnect()
Then dest.isConnected() returns true, even though dest will not get any data from anywhere (there is no writer anymore on that connection).

This is more general, as it is for instance very difficult to implement proper connection management in the CORBA case.
  • Because of this connection management issue, it is very difficult to implement a "push" model. It leads to huge problems with the CORBA transport when wireless is bad, because each pop or get needs a few calls.
  • It makes the whole implementation a huge mess. There is at least twice the number of classes normally needed to implement a connection model *and* code is not reused (DataPort is actually *not* a subclass of both ReadDataPort and WriteDataPort, same for buffers).
  • We already had a long thread about multiple-output buffered connections. I'll summarize what for me was the most important points:
    • the current implementation allows to distribute workload seamlessly between different task contexts.
    • it does not allow to send the same set of samples to different task contexts. Ther is a hack allowing to read buffer connections as if they were data connections, but it is a hack given that the reader cannot know if it is really reading a sample or reading a default value because the buffer is empty.
IMO the first case is actually rare in robotic control (and you can implement a generic workload-sharing component with nicer features like for instance keeping the ordering between input and output) like in the following example:

                             => A0 A3 [PROCESSING] => A'0 A'3
 A0 A1 A2 A3 => [WORK SHARING                                  WORK SHARING] => A'0 A'1 A'2 A'3
                             => A1 A2 [PROCESSING] => A'1 A'2
The second case is much more common. For instance, in my robot, I want to have a safety component that monitors a laser scanner (near-obstacle detection for the purpose of safety) and the same laser scans to go to a SLAM algorithm. I cannot do that for now, because I need a buffered connection to the SLAM algorithm. I cannot use the aforementionned hack either because for now I plan to put a network connection between the scanner driver and the two targets, and therefore I cannot really guarantee which component will get what.

Proposal

What I'm proposing is getting back to a good'ol data flow model, namely:

  • making write ports "send and forget". If the port fails to write, then it is the problem of the reader ! I really don't see what the writer can do about it anyway, given that it does not know what the data will be used for (principle of component separation). The reader can still detect that its input buffer is full and that it did not get some samples and do something about it.

  • making write ports "connection-type less". I.e. no WRITE data ports and WRITE buffer ports anymore, only write ports. This will allow to connect a write port to a read port with any kind of connections. Actually, I don't see a use case where the port designer can actually decide what kind of connection is best for its OUTPUT ports. Some examples:
    • in the laser scanner example above, the safety component would like a data port and the slam a buffer port
    • in position filtering, some components just want the latest positions and other components all the position stream (for interpolation purposes for instance)
    • in general, GUI vs. X. GUIs want most of the time the latest values.
    • ... I'm sure I can come up with other examples if you want them
  • locating the sample on the read ports (i.e. no ConnectionInterface and subclasses anymore). The bad: one copy of each sample per read port. The good: you implement the point above (write ports do not have a connection type), and you fix buffer connections once and for all.
  • removing (or deprecating) read/write ports. They really have no place in a data flow model.

Simplified, more robust default activities

From RTT 1.8 on, an Orocos component is created with a default 'SequentialActivity', which uses ('piggy-backs on') the calling thread to execute its asynchronous functions. It has been argued that this is not a safe default, because a component with a faulty asynchronous function can terminate the thread of a calling component, in case the 'caller' emits an asynchronous event (this is quite technical, you need to be on orocos-dev for a while to understand this).

Furthermore, in case you do want to assign a thread, you need to select a 'PeriodicActivity' or 'NonPeriodicActivity', which have their quirks as well. For example, PeriodicActivity serialises activities with equal period and periodicity, and NonPeriodicActivity says what it isn't instead of what it is.

The idea is to create a new activity type which allocates one thread, and which can be periodic or non-periodic. The other activity types remain (and/or are renamed) for specialist users that know what they want.

Streamlined Execution Flow API

It started with an idea on FOSDEM. It went on as a long mail (click link for full text and discussion) on the Orocos-dev mailing list.

Here's the summary:

  • RTT interoperates badly with other software, for example, any external process needs to go through a convoluted CORBA layer. There are also no tools that could ease the job (except the ctaskbrowser), for example some small shell commands that can query/change a component.
  • RTT has remaining usability issues. Sylvain already identified the short commings of data/buffer ports and proposed a solution. But any user wrestling with the Should I use an Event (syn/asyn)-Method-Command-DataPort'?' question only got the answer: Well, we got Events(syn/asyn)-Methods-Commands and DataPorts !'. It's not coherent. There are other frameworks doing a better job. We can do a far better job.
  • RTT has issues with its current distribution implementation: programs can be constructed as such that they cause mem leaks at the remote side, Events never got into the CORBA interface (there is a reason for that), and our data ports over CORBA are equally weak as the C++ implementation.
  • And then there are also the untaken opportunities to reduce RTT & component code size drastically and remove complex features.

The pages below analyse and propose new solutions. The pages are in chronological order, so later pages represent more recent views.

First analysis

I've seen people using the RTT for inter-thread communication in two major ways: or implement a function as a Method, or as a Command. Where the command was the thread-safe way to change the state of a component. The adventurous used Events as well, but I can't say they're a huge success (we got like only one 'thank you' email in its whole existence...). But anyway, Commands are complex for newbies, Events (syn/asyn) aren't better. So for all these people, here it comes: the RTT::Message object. Remember, Methods allow a peer component to _call_ a function foo(args) of the component interface. Messages will have the meaning of _sending_ another component a message to execute a function foo(args). Contrary to Methods, Messages are 'send and forget', they return void. The only guarantee you got is, that if the receiver was active, it processed it. For now, forget that Commands exist. We have two inter- component messaging primitives now: Messages and Methods. And each component declares: You can call these methods and send these messages. They are the 'Level 0' primitives of the RTT. Any transport should support these. Note that conveniently, the transport layer may implement messages with the same primitive as data ports. But we, users, don't care. We still have Data Ports to 'broadcast' our data streams and now we have Messages as well to send directly to component X.

Think about it. The RTT would be already usable if each component only had data ports and a Message/Method interface. Ask the AUTOSAR people, it's very close to what they have (and can live with).

There's one side effect of the Message: we will need a real-time memory allocator to reserve a piece of memory for each message sent, and free it when the message is processed. Welcome TLSF. In case such a thing is not possible wanted by the user, Messages can fall back to using pre-allocated memory, but at the cost of reduced functionality (similar to what Commands can do today). Also, we'll have a MessageProcessor, which replaces and is a slimmed down version of the CommandProcessor today.

So where does this leave Events? Events are of the last primitives I explain in courses because they are so complex. They don't need to be. Today you need to attach a C/C++ function to an event and optionally specify an EventProcessor. Depending on some this-or-thats the function is executed in this-or-the-other thread. Let's forget about that. In essence, an Event is a local thing that others like to know about: Something happened 'here', who wants to know? Events can be changed such that you can say: If event 'e' happens, then call this Method. And you can say: if event 'e' happens, send me this Message. You can subscribe as many callbacks as you want. Because of the lack of this mechanism, the current Event implementation has a huge foot print. There's a lot to win here.

Do you want to allow others to raise the event ? Easy: add it to the Message or Method interface, saying: send me this Message and I'll raise the event, or call this Method and you'll raise it, respectively. But if someone can raise it, is your component's choice. That's what the event interface should look like. It's a Level 1. A transport should do no more than allowing to connect Methods and Messages (which it already supports, Level 1) to Events. No more. Even our CORBA layer could do that.

The implementation of Event can benefit from a rt_malloc as well. Indirectly. Each raised Event which causes Messages to be sent out will use the Message's rt_malloc to store the event data by just sending the Message. In case you don't have/want an rt_malloc, you fall back to what events can roughly do today. But with lots of less code ( Goodbye RTT::ConnectionC, Goodbye RTT::EventProcessor ).

And now comes the climax: Sir Command. How does he fit in the picture? He'll remain in some form, but mainly as a 'Level 2' citizen. He'll be composed of Methods, Messages and Events and will be dressed out to be no more than a wrapper, keeping related classes together or even not that. Replacing a Command with a Message hardly changes anything in the C++ side. For scripts, Commands were damn useful, but we will come up with something satisfactory. I'm sure.

How does all this interface shuffling allows us to get 'towards a sustainable distributed component model'? That's because we're seriously lowering the requirements on the transport layer:

  • It only needs to implement the Level 0 primitives. How proxies and servers are built depends on the transport. You can do so manually (dlib like) or automatically (CORBA like)
  • It allows the transport to control memory better, share it between clients and clean it up at about any time.
  • The data flow changes Sylvain proposes strengthen our data flow model and I'm betting on it that it won't use CORBA as a transport. Who knows.

And we are at the same time lowering the learning curve for new users:

  • You can easily explain the basic primitives: Properties=>XML, DataPorts=>process data, Methods/Messages=>client/server requests. When they're familiar with these, they can start playing with Events (which build on top of Method/Messages and play a role in DataPorts as well). And finally, if they'll ever need, the Convoluted Command can encompass the most complex scenarios.
  • You can more easily connect with other middleware or external programs. People with other middleware will see the opportunities for 1-to-1 mappings or even implement it as a transport in the RTT.

Dissecting Command and Method: blocking/non-blocking vs synchronous/asynchronous

(Please feel free to edit/comment etc. This is a community document, not a personal document)

Notes on naming

The word service is used to name the offering of a C/C++ function for others to call. Today in Orocos Components offer services in the form of 'RTT::Method' or 'RTT::Command' objects. Both lead to the execution of a function, but in a different way. Also, despite the title, it is advised to refrain from using the terms synchronous/asynchronous, because they are relative terms and may cause confusion if the context is not clear.

An alternative naming is possible: the offering of a C/C++ function could be named 'operation' and the collection of a given set of operations in an interface could be called a 'service'. This definition would line up better with service oriented architectures like OSGi.

Purpose

This page collects the ideas around the new primitives that will replace/enhance Method and/or Command. Although Method is a clearly understood primitive by users, Command isn't because of its multi-threaded nature. It is too complex to setup/use and can lead to unsafe applications (segfaults) if used incorrectly. To get these primitives better, we re-look at what users want to do and how to map this to RTT primitives.

What users want to do

Users want to control which thread executes which function, and if they want to wait(block) on the result or not. This all in order to meet deadlines in real-time systems. In practice, this boils down to:

  • When calling services (ie functions) of other components, one may opt to wait until the service returns the result, or not and optionally collect the result later. This is often best decided at the caller side, because both cases will cause different client code for sending/receiving the results
  • When implementing services in a component, the component may decide that the caller's thread executes the function, or that it will execute the function in it's own thread. Clearly, this can only be decided at the receiver side, because both cases will cause a different implementation of the function to be executed. Especially with respect to thread-safety.

Dissecting the cases

When putting the above in a table, you get:
Calling a service (a function)
Wait? \ Thread? Caller Component
Yes (Method) (?)
No X (Command)

For reference, the current RTT 1.x primitives are shown. There are two remarkable spots: the X and the (?).

  • The X is a practically impossible situation. It would involve that the client thread does not wait, but its thread still executes the function. This could only be resolved if a 'third' thread executes the service on behalf of the caller. It is unclear at which priority this thread should execute, what it's lifetime and exclusivity is and so on.
  • The (?) marks a hole in the current RTT API. Users could only implement this behaviour by busy-waiting on the Command's done() function. However, that is disastrous in real-time systems, because of starvation or priority inversion issues that crop up with such techniques.

Another thing you should be aware of that in the current implementation, caller and component must agree on how the service is invoked. If the Component defines a Method, the caller must execute it in its own thread and wait for the result. There's no other way for the caller to deviate from this. In practice, this means that the component's interface dictates how the caller can use its services. This is consistent with how UML defines operations, but other frameworks, like ICE, allow any function part of the interface to be called blocking or non-blocking. Clearly, ICE has some kind of thread-pool behind the scenes that does the dispatching and collects the results on behalf of the caller.

Backwards compatibility - Or how it is now

Orocos users have written many components and the primary idea of RTT 2.0 is to solve issues these components still have due to defects in the current RTT 1.x design. Things that do work satisfactory should keep working without modification of the user's design.

Method

It is very likely that the RTT::Method primitive will remain to exist as it is today. Little problems have been reported and it is easy to understand. The only disadvantage is that it can not be called 'asynchronously'. For example: if a component defines a Method, but the caller does not have the resources to invoke it (due to a deadline), it needs to setup a separate thread to do the call on its behalf. This is error prone. Orocos users often solve this by defining a command and trying to get the result data back somehow (also error prone).

Command

Commands serve multiple purposes in today programming with Orocos.
  • First, they allow thread-safe execution of a piece of code in a component. Because the component thread executes the function, no locking or synchronization primitives are required.
  • Second, they allow a caller to dispatch work to another component, in case the caller does not have the time or resources to execute a function.
  • Third, they allow to track the status of the execution. The caller can poll to see if the function has been queued, executed, what it returned (a boolean) etc.
  • Fourth, they allow to track the status of the 'effect' of the command, past its execution. This is done by attaching a completion condition, which returns a bool and can indicate if the effect of the command has been completed or not. For example, if the command is to move to a position, the completion condition would return true if the position is reached, while the command function would have only programmed the interpolator to reach that position. Completion conditions are not that much used, and must be polled.

A simpler form of Command will be provided that does not contain the completion condition. It is too seldomly used.

It is to the proposals to show how to emulate the old behavior with the new primitives.

Proposals

Each proposal should try to solve these issues:

The ability to let caller and component choose which execution semantics they want when calling or offering a service (or motivate why a certain choice is limited):

  • The ability to wait for a service to be completed
  • The ability to invoke a service and not wait for the result
  • The ability to specify in the component implementation if a function is executed in the component's thread
  • The ability to specify in the component implementation if a function is executed in the caller's thread

And regarding easy use and backwards compatibility:

  • Show how old-time behavior can be emulated with the new proposal
  • Show which semantics changed
  • How these primitives will be used in the scripting languages and in C++

And finally:

  • Define proper names for each behavior.

Proposal 1: Method/Message

This is one of the earliest proposals. It proposes to keep Method as-is, remove Command and replace it with a new primitive: RTT::Message. The Message is a stripped Command. It has no completion condition and is send-and-forget. One can not track the status or retrieve arguments. It also uses a memory manager to allow to invoke the same Message object multiple times with different data.

Emulating a completion condition is done by defining the completion condition as a Method in the component interface and requiring that the sender of the Message checks that Method to evaluate progress. In scripting this becomes:

// Old:
  do comp.command("hello"); // waits (polls) here until complete returns true
 
// New: Makes explicit what above line does:
  do comp.message("hello"); // proceeds immediately
  while ( comp.message_complete("hello") == false ) // polling
     do nothing;

In C++, the equivalent is slightly different:

// Old:
  if ( command("hello") ) {
     //... user specific logic that checks command.done() 
  }
 
// New:
  if ( message("hello") ) { // send and forget, returns immediately
     // user specifc logic that checks message_complete("hello")
  }

Users have indicated that they also wanted to be able to specify in C++:

  message.wait("hello"); // send and block until executed.

It is not clear yet how the wait case can be implemented efficiently.

The user visible object names are:

  • RTT::Method to add a 'client thread' C/C++ function to the component interface or call one.
  • RTT::Message to add a 'component thread' C/C++ function to the component interface or call one.

This proposal solves:

  • A simpler replacement for Command
  • Acceptable emulation capacities of old user code
  • The invocation of multiple times the same message object in a row.

This proposal omits:

  • The choice of caller/component to choose independently
  • Solving case 'X' (see above)
  • How message.wait() can be implemented

Other notes:

  • It has been mentioned that 'Message' is not a good and too confusing name.

Proposal 2: Method/Service

This proposal focuses on separating the definition of a Service (component side) from the calling of a Method (caller side).

The idea is that components only define services, and assign properties to these services. The main properties to toggle are 'executed in my thread or callers thread, or even another thread'. But other properties could be added too. For example: a 'serialized' property which causes the locking of a (recursive!) mutex during the execution of the service. The user of the service can not and does not need to know how these properties are set. He only sees a list of services in the interface.

It is the caller that chooses how to invoke a given service: waiting for the result ('call') or not ('send'). If he doesn't want to wait, he has the option to collect the results later ('collect'). The default is blocking ('call'). Note that this waiting or not is completely independent of how the service was defined by the component, the framework will choose a different 'execution' implementation depending on the combination of the properties of service and caller.

This means that this proposal allows to have all four quadrants of the table above. This proposal does not detail yet how to implement case (X) though, which requires a 3rd thread to do the actual execution of the service (neither component nor caller wish to do execute the C function).

This would result in the following scripting code on caller side:

//Old:
  do comp.the_method("hello");
 
//New:
  do comp.the_service.call("hello"); // equivalent to the_method.
 
//Old:
  do comp.the_command("hello");
 
//New:
  do comp.the_service.send("hello"); // equivalent to the_command, but without completion condition.

This example shows two use cases for the same 'the_service' functionality. The first case emulates an RTT 1.x method. It is called and the caller waits until the function has been executed. You can not see here which thread effectively executes the call. Maybe it's 'comp's thread, in which case the caller's thread is blocking until it the function is executed. Maybe it's the caller's thread, in which case it is effectively executing the function. The caller doesn't care actually. The only thing that has effect is that it takes a certain amount of time to complete the call, *and* that if the call returns, the function has been effectively executed.

The second case is emulating an RTT 1.x command. The send returns immediately and there is no way in knowing when the function has been executed. The only guarantee you have is that the request arrived at the other side and bar crashes and infinite loops, will complete some time in the future.

A third example is shown below where another service is used with a 'send' which returns a result. The service takes two arguments: a string and a double. The double is the answer of the service, but is not yet available when the send is done. So the second argument is just ignored during the send. A handle 'h' is returned which identifies your send request. You can re-use this handle to collect the results. During collection, the first argument is now ignored, and the second argument is filled in with the result of the service. Collection may be blocking or not.

//New, with collecting results:
  var double ignored_result, result;
 
  set h = comp.other_service.send("hello", ignored_result);
 
  // some time later :
  comp.other_service.collect(h, "ignored", result); // blocking !
 
  // or poll for it:
  if ( comp.other_service.collect_if_done( h, "ignored", result ) == true ) then {
     // use result...
  }

In C++ the above examples are written as:

//New calling:
  the_service.call("hello", result); // also allowed: the_service("hello", result);
 
//New sending:
  the_service.send("hello", ignored_result);
 
//New sending with collecting results:
  h = other_service.send("hello", ignored_result);
 
  // some time later:
  other_service.collect(h, "ignored", result); // blocking !
 
  // or poll for it:
  if ( other_service.collect_if_done( h, "ignored", result ) == true ) {
     // use result...
  }

Completion condition emulation is done like in Proposal 1.

The definition of the service happens at the component's side. The component decides for each service if it is executed in his thread or the callers thread:

  // by default creates a service executed by caller, equivalent to defining a RTT 1.x Method  
  RTT::Service the_service("the_service", &foo_service );
 
  // sets the service to be executed by the component's thread, equivalent to Command
  the_service.setExecutor( this );
 
  //above in one line:
  RTT::Service the_service("the_service", &foo_service, this );

The user visible object names are:

  • RTT::Service to add a C/C++ function to the component interface (replaces use of Method/Command).
  • RTT::CallMethod or similar to call a service, please discuss a good/better name.
  • RTT::SendMethod or similar to send (and collect results from) a service, please discuss a good/better name.

This proposal solves:

  • Allows to specify threading parameters in the component independent of call/send semantics.
  • Removes user method/command dilemma.
  • Aligns better with 3rd party frameworks that also offer 'services'.

This proposal omits:

  • How collection semantics are exactly.
  • How to resolve a 'send' with a 'service executed in thread of caller' (case X). Should a send indicate which thread must do the send on its behalf ? Is the execution deferred in another point in time in the caller's thread ?

Your Proposal here

...

Provides vs Requires interfaces

Users can express the 'provides' interface of an Orocos Component. However, there is no easy way to express which other components a component requires. The notable exception is data flow ports, which have in-ports (requires) and out-ports (provides). It is however not possible to express this requires interface for the execution flow interface, thus for methods, commands/messages and events. This omission makes the component specification incomplete.

One of the first questions raised is if this must be expressed in C++ or during 'modelling'. That is, UML can express the requires dependency, so why should the C++ code also contain it in the form of code ? It should only contain it if you can't generate code from your UML model. Since this is not yet available for Orocos components, there is no other choice than expressing it in C++.

A requires interface specification should be optional and only be present for:

  • completing the component specification, allowing better review and understanding
  • automatically connecting component 'execution' interfaces, such that the manual lookup work which you need to write today can be omitted.

We apply this in code examples to various proposed primitives in the pages below.

New Command API

Commands are no longer a part of the TaskContext API. They are helper classes which replicate the old RTT 1.0 behaviour. In order to setup commands more easily, it is allowed to register them as a 'requires()' interface.

This is all very experimental.

/**
 * Provider of a Message with command-like semantics
 */
class TaskA    : public TaskContext
{
    Message<void(double)>   message;
    Method<bool(double)>    message_is_done;
    Event<void(double)>     done_event;
 
    void mesg(double arg1) {
        return;
    }
 
    bool is_done(double arg1) {
        return true;
    }
 
public:
 
    TaskA(std::string name)
        : TaskContext(name),
          message("Message",&TaskA::mesg, this),
          message_is_done("MessageIsDone",&TaskA::is_done, this),
          done_event("DoneEvent")
    {
        this->provides()->addMessage(&message, "The Message", "arg1", "Argument 1");
        this->provides()->addMethod(&method, "Is the Message done?", "arg1", "Argument 1");
        this->provides()->addEvent(&done_event, "Emited when the Message is done.", "arg1", "Argument 1");
    }
 
};
 
class TaskB   : public TaskContext
{
    // RTT 1.0 style command object
    Command<bool(double)>   command1;
    Command<bool(double)>   command2;
 
public:
 
    TaskB(std::string name)
        : TaskContext(name),
          command1("command1"),
          command2("command2")
    {
        // the commands are now created client side, you
        // can not add them to your 'provides' interface
        command1.useMessage("Message");
        command1.useCondition("MessageIsDone");
        command2.useMessage("Message");
        command2.useEvent("DoneEvent");
 
        // this allows automatic setup of the command.
        this->requires()->addCommand( &command1 );
        this->requires()->addCommand( &command2 );
    }
 
    bool configureHook() {
        // setup is done during deployment.
        return command1.ready() && command2.ready();
    }
 
    void updateHook() {
        // calls TaskA:
        if ( command1.ready() && command2.ready() )
            command1( 4.0 );
        if ( command1.done() && command2.ready() )
            command2( 1.0 );
    }
};
 
int ORO_main( int, char** )
{
    // Create your tasks
    TaskA ta("Provider");
    TaskB tb("Subscriber");
 
    connectPeers(ta, tb);
    // connects interfaces.
    connectInterfaces(ta, tb);
    return 0;
}

New Event API

The idea of the new Event API is that: 1. only the owner of the event can emit the event (unless the event is also added as a Method or Message) 2. Only methods or message objects can subscribe to events.

/**
 * Provider of Event
 */
class TaskA    : public TaskContext
{
    Event<void(string)>   event;
 
public:
 
    TaskA(std::string name)
        : TaskContext(name),
          event("Event")
    {
        this->provides()->addEvent(&event, "The Event", "arg1", "Argument 1");
        // OR:
        this->provides("FooInterface")->addEvent(&event, "The Event", "arg1", "Argument 1");
 
        // If you want the user to let him emit the event:
        this->provides()->addMethod(&event, "Emit The Event", "arg1", "Argument 1");
    }
 
    void updateHook() {
        event("hello world");
    }
};
 
/**
 * Subscribes a local Method and a Message to Event
 */
class TaskB   : public TaskContext
{
    Message<void(string)>   message;
    Method<void(string)>    method;
 
    // Message callback
    void mesg(double arg1) {
        return;
    }
 
    // Method callback
    int meth(double arg1) {
        return 0;
    }
 
public:
 
    TaskB(std::string name)
        : TaskContext(name),
          message("Message",&TaskB::mesg, this),
          method("Method",&TaskB::meth, this)
    {
        // optional:
        // this->provides()->addMessage(&message, "The Message", "arg1", "Argument 1");
        // this->provides()->addMethod(&method, "The Method", "arg1", "Argument 1");
 
        // subscribe to event:
        this->requires()->addCallback("Event", &message);
        this->requires()->addCallback("Event", &method);
 
        // OR:
        // this->provides("FooInterface")->addMessage(&message, "The Message", "arg1", "Argument 1");
        // this->provides("FooInterface")->addMethod(&method, "The Method", "arg1", "Argument 1");
 
        // subscribe to event:
        this->requires("FooInterface")->addCallback("Event", &message);
        this->requires("FooInterface")->addCallback("Event", &method);
    }
 
    bool configureHook() {
        // setup is done during deployment.
        return message.ready() && method.ready();
    }
 
    void updateHook() {
        // we only receive
    }
};
 
int ORO_main( int, char** )
{
    // Create your tasks
    TaskA ta("Provider");
    TaskB tb("Subscriber");
 
    connectPeers(ta, tb);
    // connects interfaces.
    connectInterfaces(ta, tb);
    return 0;
}

New Message API

This use case shows how one can use messages in the new API. The unchanged method is added for comparison. Note that I have also added the provides() and requires() mechanism such that the RTT 1.0 construction:

  method = this->getPeer("PeerX")->getMethod<int(double)>("Method");

is no longer required. The connection is made similar as data flow ports are connected.

/**
 * Provider
 */
class TaskA    : public TaskContext
{
    Message<void(double)>   message;
    Method<int(double)>     method;
 
    void mesg(double arg1) {
        return;
    }
 
    int meth(double arg1) {
        return 0;
    }
 
public:
 
    TaskA(std::string name)
        : TaskContext(name),
          message("Message",&TaskA::mesg, this),
          method("Method",&TaskA::meth, this)
    {
        this->provides()->addMessage(&message, "The Message", "arg1", "Argument 1");
        this->provides()->addMethod(&method, "The Method", "arg1", "Argument 1");
        // OR:
        this->provides("FooInterface")->addMessage(&message, "The Message", "arg1", "Argument 1");
        this->provides("FooInterface")->addMethod(&method, "The Method", "arg1", "Argument 1");
    }
 
};
 
class TaskB   : public TaskContext
{
    Message<void(double)>   message;
    Method<int(double)>     method;
 
public:
 
    TaskB(std::string name)
        : TaskContext(name),
          message("Message"),
          method("Method")
    {
        this->requires()->addMessage( &message );
        this->requires()->addMethod( &method );
        // OR:
        this->requires("FooInterface")->addMessage( &message );
        this->requires("FooInterface")->addMethod( &method );
    }
 
    bool configureHook() {
        // setup is done during deployment.
        return message.ready() && method.ready();
    }
 
    void updateHook() {
        // calls TaskA:
        method( 4.0 );
        // sends two messages:
        message( 1.0 );
        message( 2.0 );
    }
};
 
int ORO_main( int, char** )
{
    // Create your tasks
    TaskA ta("Provider");
    TaskB tb("Subscriber");
 
    connectPeers(ta, tb);
    // connects interfaces.
    connectInterfaces(ta, tb);
    return 0;
}

New Method, Operation, Service API

This page shows some use cases on how to use the newly proposed services classes in RTT 2.0.

WARNING: This page assumes the reader has familiarity with the current RTT 1.x API.

First, we introduce the new classes that would be added to the RTT:

#include <rtt/TaskContext.hpp>
#include <string>
 
using RTT::TaskContext;
using std::string;
 
/**************************************
 * PART I: New Orocos Classes
 */
 
/**
 * An operation is a function a component offers to do.
 */
template<class T>
class Operation {};
 
/**
 * A Service collects a number of operations.
 */
class ServiceProvider {
public:
    ServiceProvider(string name, TaskContext* owner);
};
 
/**
 * Is the invocation of an Operation.
 * Methods can be executed blocking or non blocking,
 * in the latter case the caller can retrieve the results
 * later on.
 */
template<class T>
class Method {};
 
/**
 * A ServiceRequester collects a number of methods
 */
class ServiceRequester {
public:
    ServiceRequester(string name, TaskContext* owner);
 
    bool ready();
};

What is important to notice here is the symmetry:

 (Operation, ServiceProvider) <-> (Method, ServiceRequester).
The left hand side is offering services, the right hand side is using the services.

First we define that we provide a service. The user starts from his own C++ class with virtual functions. This class is then implemented in a component. A helper class ties the interface to the RTT framework:

/**************************************
 * PART II: User code for PROVIDING a service
 */
 
/**
 * Example Service as abstract C++ interface (non-Orocos).
 */
class MyServiceInterface {
public:
    /**
     * Description.
     * @param name Name of thing to do.
     * @param value Value to use.
     */
    virtual int foo_function(std::string name, double value) = 0;
 
    /**
     * Description.
     * @param name Name of thing to do.
     * @param value Value to use.
     */
    virtual int bar_service(std::string name, double value) = 0;
};
 
/**
 * MyServiceInterface exported as Orocos interface.
 * This could be auto-generated from reading MyServiceInterface.
 *
 */
class MyService {
protected:
    /**
     * These definitions are not required in case of 'addOperation' below.
     */
    Operation<int(const std::string&,double)> operation1;
    Operation<int(const std::string&,double)> operation2;
 
    /**
     * Stores the operations we offer.
     */
    ServiceProvider provider;
public:
    MyService(TaskContext* owner, MyServiceInterface* service)
    : provider("MyService", owner),
      operation1("foo_function"), operation2("bar_service")
    {
                // operation1 ties to foo_function and is executed in caller's thread.
        operation1.calls(&MyServiceInterface::foo_function, service, Service::CallerThread);
        operation1.doc("Description", "name", "Name of thing to do.", "value", "Value to use.");
                provider.addOperation( operation1 );
 
        // OR: (does not need operation1 definition above)
        // Operation executed by caller's thread:
        provider.addOperation("foo_function", &MyServiceInterface::foo_function, service, Service::CallerThread)
                .doc("Description", "name", "Name of thing to do.", "value", "Value to use.");
 
        // Operation executed in component's thread:
        provider.addOperation("bar_service", &MyServiceInterface::bar_service, service, Service::OwnThread)
                .doc("Description", "name", "Name of thing to do.", "value", "Value to use.");
    }
};

Finally, any component is free to provide the service defined above. Note that it shouldn't be that hard to autogenerate most of the above code.

/**
 * A component that implements and provides a service.
 */
class MyComponent : public TaskContext, protected MyServiceInterface
{
    /**
     * The class defined above.
     */
    MyService serv;
public:
    /**
     * Just pass on TaskContext and MyServiceInterface pointers:
     */
    MyComponent() : TaskContext("MC"), serv(this,this)
    {
 
    }
 
protected:
    // Implements MyServiceInterface
    int foo_function(std::string name, double value)
    {
        //...
        return 0;
    }
    // Implements MyServiceInterface
    int bar_service(std::string name, double value)
    {
        //...
        return 0;
    }
};

The second part is about using this service. It creates a ServiceRequester object that stores all the methods it wants to be able to call.

Note that both ServiceRequester below and ServiceProvider above have the same name "MyService". This is how the deployment can link the interfaces together automatically.

/**************************************
 * PART II: User code for REQUIRING a service
 */
 
/**
 * We need something like this to define which services
 * our component requires.
 * This class is written explicitly, but it can also be done
 * automatically, as the example below shows.
 *
 * If possible, this class should be generated too.
 */
class MyServiceUser {
    ServiceRequester rservice;
public:
    Method<int(const string&, double)> foo_function;
    MyServiceUser( TaskContext*  owner )
    : rservice("MyService", owner), foo_function("foo_function")
      {
        rservice.requires(foo_function);
      }
};
 
/**
 * Uses the MyServiceUser helper class.
 */
class UserComponent2 : public TaskContext
{
    // also possible to (privately) inherit from this class.
    MyServiceUser mserv;
public:
    UserComponent2() : TaskContext("User2"), mserv(this)
    {
    }
 
    bool configureHook() {
        if ( ! mserv->ready() ) {
            // service not ready
            return false;
        }
    }
 
    void updateHook() {
        // blocking:
        mserv.foo_function.call("name", 3.14);
        // etc. see updateHook() below.
    }
};

The helper class can again be omitted, but the Method<> definitions must remain in place (in contrast, the Operation<> definitions for providing a service could be omitted).

The code below also demonstrates the different use cases for the Method object.

/**
 * A component that uses a service.
 * This component doesn't need MyServiceUser, it uses
 * the factory functions instead:
 */
class UserComponent : public TaskContext
{
    // A definition like this must always be present because
    // we need it for calling. We also must provide the function signature.
    Method<int(const string&, double)> foo_function;
public:
    UserComponent() : TaskContext("User"), foo_function("foo_function")
    {
        // creates this requirement automatically:
        this->requires("MyService")->add(&foo_function);
    }
 
    bool configureHook() {
        if ( !this->requires("MyService")->ready() ) {
            // service not ready
            return false;
        }
    }
 
    /**
     * Use the service
     */
    void updateHook() {
        // blocking:
        foo_function.call("name", 3.14);
        // short/equivalent to call:
        foo_function("name", 3.14);
 
        // non blocking:
        foo_function.send("name", 3.14);
 
        // blocking collect of return value of foo_function:
        int ret = foo_function.collect();
 
        // blocking collect of any arguments of foo_function:
        string ret1; double ret2;
        int ret = foo_function.collect(ret1, ret2);
 
        // non blocking collect:
        int returnval;
        if ( foo_function.collectIfDone(ret1,ret2,returnval) ) {
            // foo_function was done. Any argument that needed updating has
            // been updated.
        }
    }
};

Finally, we conclude with an example of requiring the same service multiple times, for example, for controlling two stereo-vision cameras.

/**
 * Multi-service case: use same service multiple times.
 * Example: stereo vision with two cameras.
 */
class UserComponent3 : public TaskContext
{
    // also possible to (privately) inherit from this class.
    MyVisionUser vision;
public:
    UserComponent3() : TaskContext("User2"), vision(this)
    {
        // requires a service exactly two times:
        this->requires(vision)["2"];
        // OR any number of times:
        // this->requires(vision)["*"];
        // OR range:
        // this->requires(vision)["0..2"];
    }
 
    bool configureHook() {
        if ( ! vision->ready() ) {
            // only true if both are ready.
            return false;
        }
 
    }
 
    void updateHook() {
        // blocking:
        vision[0].foo_function.call("name", 3.14);
        vision[1].foo_function.call("name", 3.14);
        // or iterate:
        for(int i=0; i != vision.interfaces(); ++i)
            vision[i].foo_function.call("name",3.14);
        // etc. see updateHook() above.
 
        /* Scripting equivalent:
         * for(int i=0; i != vision.interfaces(); ++i)
         *   do vision[i].foo_function.call("name",3.14);
         */
    }
};

Upgrading from RTT 1.x to 2.0

For upgrading, we have:

More details are split into several child pages.

Methods vs Operations

RTT 2.0 has unified events, commands and methods in the Operation interface.

Purpose

To allow one component to provide a function and other components, located anywhere, to call it. This is often called 'offering a service'. Orocos component can offer many functions to any number of components.

Component interface

In Orocos, a C or C++ function is managed by the 'RTT::Operation' object. Click below to read the rest of this post.RTT 2.0 has unified events, commands and methods in the Operation interface.

Purpose

To allow one component to provide a function and other components, located anywhere, to call it. This is often called 'offering a service'. Orocos component can offer many functions to any number of components.

Component interface

In Orocos, a C or C++ function is managed by the 'RTT::Operation' object. So the first task is to create such an operation object for each function you want to provide.

This is how a function is added to the component interface:

  #include <rtt/Operation.hpp>;
  using namespace RTT;
 
  class MyTask
    : public RTT::TaskContext
  {
    public:
    string getType() const { return "SpecialTypeB" }
    // ...
 
    MyTask(std::string name)
      : RTT::TaskContext(name),
    {
       // Add the a C++ method to the operation interface:
       addOperation( "getType", &MyTask::getType, this )
                .doc("Read out the name of the system.");
     }
     // ...
  };
 
  MyTask mytask("ATask");

The writer of the component has written a function 'getType()' which returns a string that other components may need. In order to add this operation to the Component's interface, you use the TaskContext's addOperation function. This is a short-hand notation for:

       // Add the C++ method to the operation interface:
       provides()->addOperation( "getType", &MyTask::getType, this )
                .doc("Read out the name of the system.");

Meaning that we add 'getType()' to the component's main interface (also called 'this' interface). addOperation takes a number of parameters: the first one is always the name, the second one a pointer to the function and the third one is the pointer to the object of that function, in our case, MyTask itself. In case the function is a C function, the third parameter may be omitted.

If you don't want to polute the component's this interface, put the operation in a sub-service:

       // Add the C++ method objects to the operation interface:
       provides("type_interface")
            ->addOperation( "getType", &MyTask::getType, this )
                .doc("Read out the name of the system.");

The code above dynamically created a new service object 'type_interface' to which one operation was added: 'getType()'. This is similar to creating an object oriented interface with one function in it.

Calling an Operation in C++

Now another task wants to call this function. There are two ways to do this: from a script or in C++. This section explains how to do it in C++

Your code needs a few things before it can call a component's operation:

  • It needs to be a peer of instance 'ATask' of MyTask.
  • It needs to know the signature of the operation it wishes to call: string (void) (this is the function's declaration without the function's name).
  • It needs to know the name of the operation it wishes to call: "getType"

Combining these three givens, we must create an OperationCaller object that will manage our call to 'getType':

#include <rtt/OperationCaller.hpp>
//...
 
  // In some other component:
  TaskContext* a_task_ptr = getPeer("ATask");
 
  // create a OperationCaller<Signature> object 'getType':
  OperationCaller<string(void)> getType
       = a_task_ptr->getOperation("getType"); // lookup 'string getType(void)'
 
  // Call 'getType' of ATask:
  cout << getType() <<endl;

A lot of work for calling a function no ? The advantages you get are these:

  • ATask may be located on any computer, or in any process.
  • You didn't need to include the header of ATask, so it's very decoupled.
  • If ATask disappears, the OperationCaller object will let you know, instead of crashing your program.
  • The exposed operation is directly available from the scripting interface.

Calling Operations in scripts

In scripts, operations are accessed far more easier. The above C++ part is reduced to:

var string result = "";
set result = ATask.getType();

Tweaking Operation's Execution

In real-time applications, it is important to know which thread will execute which code. By default the caller's thread will execute the operation's function, but you can change this when adding the operation by specifying the ExecutionType:

       // Add the C++ method to the operation interface:
       // Execute function in component's thread:
       provides("type_interface")
            ->addOperation( "getType", &MyTask::getType, this, OwnThread )
                .doc("Read out the name of the system.");

So this causes that when getType() is called, it gets queued for execution in the ATask component, is executed by its ExecutionEngine, and when done, the caller will resume. The caller (ie the OperationCaller object) will not notice this change of execution path. It will wait for the getType function to complete and return the results.

Not blocking when calling operations

In the examples above, the caller always blocked until the operation returns the result. This is not mandatory. A caller can 'send' an operation execution to a component and collect the returned values later. This is done with the 'send' function:

// This first part is equal to the example above:
 
#include <rtt/OperationCaller.hpp>
//...
 
  // In some other component:
  TaskContext* a_task_ptr = getPeer("ATask");
 
  // create a OperationCaller<Signature> object 'getType':
  OperationCaller<string(void)> getType
       = a_task_ptr->getOperation("getType"); // lookup 'string getType(void)'
 
// Here it is different:
 
  // Send 'getType' to ATask:
  SendHandle<string(void)> sh = getType.send();
 
  // Collect the return value 'some time later':
  sh.collect();             // blocks until getType() completes
  cout << sh.retn() <<endl; // prints the return value of getType().

Other variations on the use of SendHandle are possible, for example polling for the result or retrieving more than one result if the arguments are passed by reference. See the Component Builder's Manual for more details.

RTT 2.0 Data Flow Ports

RTT 2.0 has a more powerful, simple and flexible system to exchange data between components.

Renames

Every instance of ReadDataPort and ReadBufferPort must be renamed to 'InputPort' and every instance of WriteDataPort and WriteBufferPort must be renamed to OutputPort. 'DataPort' and 'BufferPort' must be renamed according to their function.

The rtt2-converter tool will do this renaming for you, or at least, make its best guess.

Usage

InputPort and OutputPort have a read() and a write() function respectively:

using namespace RTT;
double data;
 
InputPort<double> in("name");
FlowStatus fs = in.read( data ); // was: Get( data ) or Pull( data ) in 1.x
 
OutputPort<double> out("name");
out.write( data );               // was: Set( data ) or Push( data ) in 1.x

As you can see, Get() and Pull() are mapped to read(), Set() and Push() to write(). read() returns a FlowStatus object, which can be NoData, OldData, NewData. write() does not return a value (send and forget).

Writing to a not connected port is not an error. Reading from a not connected (or never written to) port returns NoData.

Your component can no longer see if a connection is buffered or not. It doesn't need to know. It can always inspect the return value of read() to see if a new data sample arrived or not. In case multiple data samples are ready to read in a buffer, read() will fetch each sample in order and each time return NewData, until the buffer is empty, in which case it returns the last data sample read with 'OldData'.

If data exchange is buffered or not is now fixed by 'Connection Policies', or 'RTT::ConnPolicy' objects. This allows you to be very flexible on how components are connected, since you only need to specify the policy at deployment time. It is possible to define a default policy for each input port, but it is not recommended to count on a certain default when building serious applications. See the 'RTT::ConnPolicy' API documentation for which policies are available and what the defaults are.

Deployment

The DeploymentComponent has been extended such that it can create new-style connections. You only need to add sections to your XML files, you don't need to change existing ones. The sections to add have the form:

  <!-- You can set per data flow connection policies -->
  <struct name="SensorValuesConnection" type="ConnPolicy">
    <!-- Type is 'shared data' or buffered: DATA: 0 , BUFFER: 1 -->
    <simple name="type" type="short"><value>1</value></simple>
    <!-- buffer size is 12 -->
    <simple name="size" type="short"><value>12</value></simple>
  </struct>
  <!-- You can repeat this struct for each connection below ... -->

Where 'SensorValuesConnection' is a connection between data flow ports, like in the traditional 1.x way.

Consult the deployment component manual for all allowed ConnPolicy XML options.

Real-time with Complex data

The data flow implementation tries to pass on your data as real-time as possible. This requires that your operator=() of your data type is hard real-time. In case your operator=() is only real-time if enough storage is allocated on beforehand, you can inform your output port of the amount of storage to pre-allocate. You can do this by using:

  std::vector<double> joints(10, 0.0);
  OutputPort<std::vector<double> > out("out");
 
  out.setDataSample( joints ); // initialises all current and future connections to hold a vector of size 10.
 
  // modify joint values... add connections etc.
 
  out.write( joints );  // always hard real-time if joints.size() <= 10

As the example shows, a single call to setDataSample() is enough. This is not the same as write() ! A write() will deliver data to each connected InputPort, a setDataSample() will only initialize the connections, but no actual writing is done. Be warned that setDataSample() may clear all data already in a connection, so it is better to call it before any data is written to the OutputPort.

In case your data type is always hard real-time copyable, there is no need to call setDataSample. For example:

  KDL::Frame f = ... ; // KDL::Frame never (de-)allocates memory during copy or construction.
 
  OutputPort< KDL::Frame > out("out");
 
  out.write( f );  // always hard real-time

Further reading

Please also consult the Component Builder's Manual and the Doxygen documentation for further reference.

RTT 2.0 Renaming table

This page lists the renamings/relocations done on the RTT 2.0 branch (available through gitorious on http://www.gitorious.org/orocos-toolchain/rtt/commits/master) and also offers the conversion scripts to do the renaming.

A note about headers/namespaces: If a header is in rtt/extras, the namespace will be RTT::extras and vice versa. A header in rtt/ has namespace RTT. Note: the OS namespace has been renamed to lowercase os. The Corba namespace has been renamed to lowercase corba.

Scripts

The script attached to the bottom of this page converts RTT 1.x code according to the renaming table below. They do so in a quasi-intelligent way and catch most cases quite correctly. Some changes require additional manual intervention because the script can not guess the missing content. You will also need to download the rtt2-converter program from here.

Namespace conversions and simple renames

Many other files moved into sub-namespaces. For all these renames and more, a script is attached to this wiki page. You need to download headers.txt, classdump.txt and to-rtt-2.0.pl.txt and rename the to-rtt-2.0.pl.txt script to to-rtt-2.0.pl:
mv to-rtt-2.0.pl.txt to-rtt-2.0.pl
chmod a+x to-rtt-2.0.pl
./to-rtt-2.0.pl $(find . -name "*.cpp" -o -name "*.hpp")
The script will read headers.txt and class-dump.txt to do its renaming work for every changed RTT header and class on the list of files you give as an argument. Feel free to report problems on the orocos-dev mailing list or RTT-dev forum.

Minor manual fixes may be expected after running this script. Be sure to have your sources version controlled, such that you can first test what the script does before permanently changing files.

Flow port and services conversions

A second program is required to convert flow port and method/command -> operation conversions that go further than a simple rename. This is called rtt2-converter. It requires boost 1.41.0 or newer. You can build rtt2-converter from Eclipse or using the Makefile using 'make all'. It also requires a recent installed version of boost with the regex library (It will link with -lregex and includes regex boost headers). See the rtt2-converter README.txt for instructions and download the converter sources from the toolchain/upgrading link.

tar xjf rtt2-converter-1.1.tar.bz2
cd rtt2-converter-1.1
make
./rtt2-converter Component.hpp Component.cpp

The script takes preferably both header and implementation of your component, but will also accept a single file. It needs both class definition and implementation to make its best guesses on how to convert. If all your code is in a .hpp or .cpp file, you only need to specify that file. If nothing is to be done, the file will remain the same, so you may 'accidentally' feed non-Orocos files, or a file twice.

To run this on a large codebase, you can do something similar to:

# Calls : ./rtt2-converter Component.hpp Component.cpp for each file in orocos-app
for i in $(find /home/user/src/orocos-app -name "*.cpp"); do ./rtt2-converter $(dirname $i)/$(basename $i cpp)hpp $i; done
 
# Calls : ./rtt2-converter Component.cpp for each .cpp file in orocos-app
for i in $(find /home/user/src/orocos-app -name "*.cpp"); do ./rtt2-converter $i; done
 
# Calls : ./rtt2-converter Component.hpp for each .hpp file in orocos-app
for i in $(find /home/user/src/orocos-app -name "*.hpp"); do ./rtt2-converter $i; done
This looks up all .cpp files in an orocos-app directory and calls rtt2-converter on each hpp/cpp pair. The dirname/basename construct is for replacing the .cpp extension with .hpp. If you have a mixed hpp+cpp/cpp/hpp repository, you'll have to run the for loop three times as shown above. The script is robust against calling it multiple times on the same file.

Core API

RTT 1.0 RTT 2.0 Comments
RTT::PeriodicActivity RTT::extras::PeriodicActivity Use of RTT::Activity is prefered
RTT::Timer RTT::os::Timer
RTT::SlaveActivity, SequentialActivity, SimulationThread, IRQActivity, FileDescriptorActivity, EventDrivenActivity, SimulationActivity, ConfigurationInterface, Configurator, TimerThread RTT::extras::... EventDrivenActivity has been removed.
RTT::OS::SingleThread, RTT::OS::PeriodicThread RTT::os::Thread Can do periodic and non-periodic and switch at run-time.
RTT::TimeService RTT::os::TimeService
RTT::DataPort,BufferPort RTT::InputPort,RTT::OutputPort Buffered/unbuffered is decided upon connection time. Only input/output is hardcoded.
RTT::types() RTT::types::Types() The function name collided with the namespace name
RTT::Toolkit* RTT::types::Typekit* More logical name
RTT::Command RTT::Operation Create an 'OwnThread' operation type
RTT::Method RTT::Operation Create an 'ClientThread' operation type
RTT::Event RTT::internal::Signal Events are replaced by OutputPort or Operation, the Signal class is a synchonous-only callback manager.
commands()->getCommand<T>() provides()->getOperation() get a provided operation, no template argument required
commands()->addCommand() provides()->addOperation().doc("Description") add a provided operation, document using .doc("doc").doc("a1","a1 doc")...
methods()->getMethod<T>() provides()->getOperation() get a provided operation, no template argument required
methods()->addMethod() provides()->addOperation().doc("Description") add a provided operation, document using .doc("doc").doc("a1","a1 doc")...
attributes()->getAttribute<T>() provides()->getAttribute() get a provided attribute, no template argument required
attributes()->addAttribute(&a) provides()->addAttribute(a) add a provided attribute, passed by reference, can now also add a normal member variable.
properties()->getProperty<T>() provides()->getProperty() get a provided property, no template argument required
properties()->addProperty(&p) provides()->addProperty(p).doc("Description") add a provided property, passed by reference, can now also add a normal member variable.
events()->getEvent<T>() ports()->getPort() OR provides()->getOperation<T>() Event<T> was replaced by OutputPort<T> or Operation<T>
ports()->addPort(&port, "Description") ports()->addPort( port ).doc("Description") Takes argument by reference and documents using .doc("text").

Scripting

RTT 1.0 RTT 2.0 Comments
scripting() getProvider<Scripting>("scripting") Returns a RTT::Scripting object. Also add #include <rtt/scripting/Scripting.hpp>

Marshalling

RTT 1.0 RTT 2.0 Comments
marshalling() getProvider<Marshalling>("marshalling") Returns a RTT::Marshalling object. Also add #include <rtt/marsh/Marshalling.hpp>
RTT::Marshaller RTT::marsh::MarshallingInterface Normally not needed for normal users.
RTT::Demarshaller RTT::marsh::DemarshallingInterface Normally not needed for normal users.

CORBA Transport

RTT 1.0 RTT 2.0 Comments
RTT::Corba::* RTT::corba::C* Each proxy class or idl interface starts with a 'C' to avoid confusion with the same named RTT C++ classes
RTT::Corba::ControlTaskServer RTT::corba::TaskContextServer renamed for consistency.
RTT::Corba::ControlTaskProxy RTT::corba::TaskContextProxy renamed for consistency.
RTT::Corba::Method,Command RTT::corba::COperationRepository,CSendHandle No need to create these helper objects, call COperationRepository directly
RTT::Corba::AttributeInterface,Expression,AssignableExpression RTT::corba::CAttributeRepository No need to create expression objects, query/use CAttributeRepository directly.
AttachmentSize
class-dump.txt7.89 KB
headers.txt10.17 KB
to-rtt-2.0.pl.txt4.78 KB

Replacing Commands

RTT 2.0 has dropped the support for the RTT::Command class. It has been replaced by the more powerful Methods vs Operations construct.

The rtt2-converter tool will automatically convert your Commands to Method/Operation pairs. Here's what happens:

// RTT 1.x code:
class ATask: public TaskContext
{
  bool prepareForUse();
  bool prepareForUseCompleted() const;
public:
  ATask(): TaskContext("ATask")
  {
    this->commands()->addCommand(RTT::command("prepareForUse",&ATask::prepareForUse,&ATask::prepareForUseCompleted,this),
                                             "prepares the robot for use");
  }
};

After:

// After rtt2-converter: RTT 2.x code:
class ATask: public TaskContext
{
  bool prepareForUse();
  bool prepareForUseCompleted() const;
public:
  ATask(): TaskContext("ATask")
  {
    this->addOperation("prepareForUse", &ATask::prepareForUse, this, RTT::OwnThread).doc("prepares the robot for use");
    this->addOperation("prepareForUseDone", &ATask::prepareForUseCompleted, this, RTT::ClientThread).doc("Returns true when prepareForUse is done.");
  }
};

What has happened is that the RTT 1.0 Command is split into two RTT 2.0 Operations: "prepareForUse" and "prepareForUseDone". The first will be executed in the component's thread ('OwnThread'), analogous to the RTT::Command semantics. The second function, prepareForUseDone, is executed in the callers thread ('ClientThread'), also analogous to the behaviour of the RTT::Command's completion condition.

The old behavior can be simulated at the callers side by these constructs:

Calling a 2.0 Operation as a 1.0 Command in C++

Polling for commands in RTT 1.x was very rudimentary. One way of doing it would have looked like this:
  Command<bool(void)> prepare = atask->commands()->getCommand<bool(void)>("prepareForUse");
  prepare(); // sends the Command object.
  while (prepare.done() == false)
    sleep(1);
You look up the command with the signature bool(void) and invoke it. Next you needed to poll for done() to return true.

In RTT 2.0, the caller's code looks up the prepareForUse Operation and then 'sends' the request to the ATask Component. Optionally, the completion condition is looked up manually and polled for as well:

  Method<bool(void)> prepare = atask->getOperation("prepareForUse");
  Method<bool(void)> prepareDone = atask->getOperation("prepareForUseDone");
  SendHandle h = prepare.send();
 
  while ( !h.collectIfDone() && prepareDone() == false )
     sleep(1);

The collectIfDone() and prepareDone() checks are now made explicit, while they were called implicitly in the RTT 1.x's prepare.done() function. Writing your code like this will case the exact same behaviour in RTT 2.0 as in RTT 1.x.

In case you don't care for the 'done' condition, the above code may just be simplified to:

  Method<bool(void)> prepare = atask->getOperation("prepareForUse");
  prepare.send();

In that case, you may ignore the SendHandle, and the object will cleanup itself at the appropriate time.

Calling a 2.0 Operation as a 1.0 Command in Scripting

Scripting was very convenient for using commands. A typical RTT 1.x script would have looked like:

program foo {
  do atask.prepareForUse();
  // ... rest of the code
}
The script would wait at the prepareForUse() line (using polling) until the command's completion.

To have the same behaviour in RTT 2.x using Operations, you need to make the 'polling' explicit. Furthermore, you need to 'send' the method to indicate that you do not wish to block:

program foo {
  var SendHandle h;
  set h = atask.prepareForUse.send();
  while (h.collectIfDone() == false && atask.prepareForUseDone() == false)
     yield;
  // ... rest of the code
}
Just like in the C++ code, you need to create a SendHandle variable and store the result of the send in it. You can then use h to see if the operation finished yet and if so, check the status of prepareForUseDone(). It may be convenient to put these in a function in RTT 2.x:

function prepare_command() {
  var SendHandle h;
  set h = atask.prepareForUse.send();
  while (h.collectIfDone() == false && atask.prepareForUseDone() == false)
     yield;
}
program foo {
   call prepare_command(); // note: using 'call'
  // ... rest of the code
}
In order to avoid blocking in the 'foo' program, you need prefix prepare_command with 'call'. This will 'inline' the function such that 'foo' will not block the ExecutionEngine until prepare_command returns. For comparison purposes, if you would omit the 'call' prefix, program would need to loop on prepare_command() in turn:

export function prepare_command()  // note: we must export the function
{
  var SendHandle h;
  set h = atask.prepareForUse.send();
  while (h.collectIfDone() == false && atask.prepareForUseDone() == false)
     yield;
}
program foo {
  var SendHandle h;
  set h = prepare_command(); // note: not using 'call'
  while (h.collectIfDone() == false)
     yield;
  // ... rest of the code
}
In RTT 2.x, a program script will only yield when the word 'yield' (equivalent to RTT 1.x 'do nothing') is seen. Both function and program must yield in order to not spin in an endless loop in the ExecutionEngine.

note

Code without 'yield' can spin forever. This blocking 'trap' in 2.0 can be very inconvenient. It's likely that an alternative system will be provided to allow 'transparant' polling for a given function. For example this syntax could be introduced:
program foo {
  prepare_command.call(); // (1) calls and blocks for result.
  prepare_command.send(); // (2) send() and forget.
  prepare_command.poll(); // (3) send() and poll with collectIfDone().
}
Syntax (1) and (2) are already present. Syntax (3) would indicate that the script must send and poll (using collectIfDone() behind the scenes) the prepare_command operation. This would always work and save users from writing the bulky SendHandle code.

Replacing Events

RTT 2.0 no longer supports the RTT::Event class. This page explains how to adapt your code for this.

Rationale

RTT::Event was broken in some subtle ways, especially the unreliable asynchronous delivery and the danger of untrusted clients made the Event fragile. It was choosen to be replaced by an OutputPort or an Operation, depending on the use case.
  • Replace an Event by an OutputPort if you want to broadcast to many components. Any event sender->receiver connection can set the buffering policy, or encapsulate a transport to another (remote) process.
  • Replace an Event by an Operation if you want to react to an interface call *inside* your component, for example, in a state machine script or in C++.

Replacing by an OutputPort

Output ports differ from RTT::Event in that they can take only one value as an argument. If your 1.x Event contained multiple arguments, they need to be taken together in a new struct that you create yourself. Both sender and receiver must know and understand this struct.

For the simple case, when your Event only had one argument:

// RTT 1.x
class MyTask: public TaskContext
{
   RTT::Event<void(int)> samples_processed;
 
   MyTask() : TaskContext("task"), samples_processed("samples_processed") 
   {
      events()->addEvent( &samples_processed );
   }
   // ... your other code here...
};  
Becomes:
// RTT 2.x
class MyTask: public TaskContext
{
   RTT::OutputPort<int> samples_processed;
 
   MyTask() : TaskContext("task"), samples_processed("samples_processed") 
   {
      ports()->addPort( samples_processed ); // note: RTT 2.x dropped the '&'
   }
   // ... your other code here...
};  

Note: the rtt2-converter tool does not do this replacement, see the Operation section below.

Components wishing to receive the number of samples processed, need to define an InputPort<int> and connect their input port to the output port above.

Reacting to event data in scripts

When using the RTT scripting service's state machine, you can react to data arriving on the port. You could for example load this script in the above component:
StateMachine SM {
 
   var int total = 0;
 
   initial state INIT {
     entry {
     }
     // Reads samples_processed and stores the result in 'total'.
     // Only if the port return 'NewData', this branch will be evaluated.
     transition samples_processed( total ) if (total > 0 ) select PROCESSING;
   }
 
   state PROCESSING {
     entry { /* processing code, use 'total' */
     }
   }
 
   final state FINI {}

The transition from state INIT to state PROCESSING will only by taken if samples_processed.read( total ) == NewData and if total > 0. Note: When your TaskContext is periodically executing, the read( total ) statement will be re-tried and overwritten in case of OldData and NewData. Only if the connection of samples_processed is completely empty (never written to or reset), total will not be overwritten.

Replacing by an Operation

Operations are can take the same signature as RTT::Event. The difference is that only the component itself can attach callbacks to an Operation, by means of the signals() function.

For example:

// RTT 1.x
class MyTask: public TaskContext
{
   RTT::Event<void(int, double)> samples_processed;
 
   MyTask() : TaskContext("task"), samples_processed("samples_processed") 
   {
      events()->addEvent( &samples_processed );
   }
   // ... your other code here...
};  
Becomes:
// RTT 2.x
class MyTask: public TaskContext
{
   RTT::Operation<void(int,double)> samples_processed;
 
   MyTask() : TaskContext("task"), samples_processed("samples_processed") 
   {
      provides()->addOperation( samples_processed ); // note: RTT 2.x dropped the '&'
 
      // Attaching a callback handler to the operation object:
      Handle h = samples_processed.signals( &MyTask::react_foo, this );
   }
   // ... your other code here...
 
   void react_foo(int i, double d) {
       cout << i <<", " << d <<endl;
   }
};  

Note: the rtt2-converter tool only does this replacement automatically. Ie. it assumes all your Event objects were only used in the local component. See the RTT 2.0 Renaming table for this tool.

Since an Operation object is always local to the component, no other components can attach callbacks. If your Operation would return a value, the callback functions needs to return it too, but it will be ignored and not received by the caller.

The callback will be executed in the same thread as the operation's function (ie OwnThread vs ClientThread).

Reacting to operations in scripts

When using the RTT scripting service's state machine, you can react to calls on the Operation. You could for example load this script in the above component:
StateMachine SM {
 
   var int total = 0;
 
   initial state INIT {
     entry {
     }
     // Reacts to the samples_processed operation to be invoked
     // and stores the argument in total. If the Operations takes multiple
     // arguments, also here multiple arguments must be given.
     transition samples_processed( total ) if (total > 0 ) select PROCESSING;
   }
 
   state PROCESSING {
     entry { /* processing code, use 'total' */
     }
   }
 
   final state FINI {}

The transition from state INIT to state PROCESSING will only by taken if samples_processed( total ) was called by another component (using a Method object, see Methods vs Operations and if the argument in that call > 0. Note: when samples_processed would return a value, your script can not influence that return value since the return value is determined by the function tied to the Operation, not by signal handlers.

NOTE: RTT 2.0.0-beta1 does not yet support the script syntax.

Using Eclipse and Orocos

.. work in progress ..

This page describes how you can configure Eclipse in order to write Orocos applications.

Important

First of all, download and install the latest Eclipse version from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads with the 'CDT' plugin (C/C++ Development Toolkit).

Don't continue if you have an Eclipse version older than Helios (3.6).

Getting Started

Eclipse is a great tool, but some Linux systems are not well prepared to use it. Follow these instructions carefully to get the most out of it.

Is Java setup correctly (Linux)?

This is a major issue. Do not use 'gij'/'kaffe'/... java implementation on Linux. You must use the Sun HotSpot(TM) OR a recent OpenJDK Runtime Environment implementation. You can check this by doing:

 java -version
 java version "1.6.0_10"
 Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_10-b33)
 Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 11.0-b15, mixed mode)
OR
java -version
java version "1.6.0_0"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.6.1) (6b16-1.6.1-3ubuntu3)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 14.0-b16, mixed mode)

Note that you should not see any text saying 'gij' or 'kaffe',... Ubuntu/Debian users can install Sun java by doing:

  sudo aptitude install sun-java6-jre
  sudo update-alternatives --config java
 ... select '/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java'

In case of instability, or misbehaving windows/buttons. Try to use the Sun (= Oracle now) version. But also google for the export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1 solution in case you use Eclipse before Helios and a 2009 or newer Linux distro.

Extra stuff for your happiness

After you installed Eclipse and Java, you need to configure additionally:
  • Download and unzip the Rinzo XML editor plug-in version 0.6.0 or later and put only the ar.com.tadp.xml.rinzo.core jar file in eclipse/dropins. This plug-in allows you to have syntax highlighting when editing XML files. Add the .cpf extension to your project's 'File Associations' and let it point to the Rinzo editor. NOTE: Eclipse has an own XML Editor plugin that you can install instead.
  • Add the Eclipse CORBA Plugin in case you need to edit IDL files. The update site is http://eclipsecorba.sourceforge.net/update
  • Add the CMake Editor Plugin in case you need to edit cmake files. The update site is http://cmakeed.sourceforge.net/updates/
  • Add the .ops and .osd Orocos scripting file extensions to the 'File Associations' and let them open in the C++ editor, this adds some basic highlighting and indentation features.
  • Add include paths of your project to /usr/include or /usr/local/include or /usr/local/orocos/include such that the Eclipse Indexer can find the Orocos C++ headers and offer coding assistance. (In case you are developing the RTT itself, add orocos-rtt/src, orocos-rtt/build/src and orocos-rtt/src/os to your include paths, assuming you created a build directory 'build'.)
  • Make sure that hovering feature is on in such that you can see if the Indexer understands your C++ code.

If you're changing Orocos code, also download and enable the Eclipse indentation file attached to this post and Import it in the 'Coding Style' tab of your project Preferences.

Eclipse and Git

Peter Soetens has a git repository on http://www.github.com/psoetens . You can check it out using Eclipse with the Egit/jgit plugin. Instructions can be found on this github page. Egit runs on all Java platforms (no dependency on Linux git). In order to install Egit, add
 http://download.eclipse.org/egit/updates
to your update sites of Eclipse (Help -> Software updates...)

If you have an existing clone (checked out with plain old git), you can 'import' it by first importing the git repository directory as a project and then right click the project -> Team -> Share Project Follow the dialogs. There's some confusion with what to type in the location box. In older versions, you'd need to type

 file:///path/to/repository
Note the three ///

Eclipse and SVN

The official Orocos repository is on http://svn.mech.kuleuven.be/repos/orocos (WebSVN link: http://svn.mech.kuleuven.be/websvn/orocos ) You can use Subclipse (http://subclipse.tigris.org) and add
 http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.4.x
to your updates sites of Eclipse (Help -> Software updates...)

If you have an existing checkout, you can 'import' it by first importing the checkout directory as a project and then right click the project -> Team -> Share Project

AttachmentSize
orocos-coding-style.xml15.51 KB

Setting up Ubuntu 10.10, Eclipse and Orocos

Ubuntu or Debian Packages

You can find Ubuntu packages of the Orocos Toolchain in the ROS package repositories. Look for the package ros-<releasename>-orocos-toolchain-ros, which installs the orocos_toolchain_ros version.

There are also build instructions for building some of these packages manually here: How to build Debian packages

The rest of this page mixes installing Java and building Orocos toolchain sources. In case you used the Debian/Ubuntu packages above, only do the Java setup.

Setup

  • Replace Java.
  • Install the GNU Toolchain
  • Get Eclipse CDT
  • Install other Orocos dependencies

Java

I am starting with Ubuntu 10.10. First thing to do is to get rid of the OpenJDK version of Java and install the Oracle (Sun) version of Java using the Synaptic Package Manager.

Do the following in Synaptic at the same time:

  • Search for openjdk- and mark for removal or complete removal.
  • Search for sun-java- and select sun-java6-jdk. Make sure the following are selected too (some might be selected already):

 * sun-java6-bin
 * sun-java6-jre
 * sun-java6-plugin
 * sun-java6-source
  • Apply the changes and exit Synaptic.

GNU Toolchain and C++ Development

Install the following:

  • build-essential
  • automake
  • bison
  • libboost-all-dev
  • cmake

Other Orocos Dependencies

  • libxerces-c-dev
  • doxygen
  • dia-gnome
  • inkscape
  • docbook-xsl

omniiOrb

Using Synaptic get all the omniOrb packages that are not marked as transitional or dbg and have the same version number. (Hint: do a search of omniorb then sort by version) Include the lib* packages too.

Build Orocos

I do not like the bootstrap/autoproj procedure of building Orocos. I prefer using the the standard build instructions found in the RTT Installation Guide

Errata in RTT Installation Guide:

  • you have to cd to orocos-toolchain-2.2.1/rtt/ and then mkdir build;cd build and continue with the instructions.

Make sure to enable CORBA by using this cmake command:

cmake .. -DOROCOS_TARGET=gnulinux -DENABLE_CORBA=ON -DCORBA_IMPLEMENTATION=OMNIORB

OCL

Install:

  • libnetcdf-dev
  • netcdf-bin
  • libncurses5-dev
  • libncursesw5-dev
  • libreadline-dev
  • libedit-dev
  • lua5.1
  • lua5.1-0-dev

cd log4cpp;mkdir build;../configure;make;make install

Now: cd ocl;mkdir build;cmake ..;make;make install

Running Eclipse

JDK BUG for JDK 6.0_18 and above FIX on 64bit systems

Put this in your eclipse.ini file under -vmargs: -XX:-UseCompressedOops

Get Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers,. Unzip it somewhere and then do:

cd eclipse
./eclipse

Creating an Eclipse Project from an Orocos package

You can use Orocos packages in Eclipse easily. The easiest way is when you're using the ROS build system, since that allows you to generate an Eclipse project, with all the correct settings. If you don't use ROS, you can import it too, but you'll have to add the paths to headers etc manually.

ROS users

cd ~/ros
rosrun ocl orocreate-pkg orocosworld
cd orocosworld
make eclipse-project

Then go to Eclipse -> File -> Import -> Existing Project into Workspace and then follow the wizard.

When the project is loaded, give it some time to index all header files. All include paths and build settings in Eclipse will be set up for you.

non-ROS users

You must have sourced env.sh !

cd ~/src
orocreate-pkg orocosworld
cd orocosworld
make

Then go to Eclipse -> File > New > Makefile Project with Existing Code and complete the wizard page.

The next step you need to do is to add the include paths to RTT and/or OCL and any other dependency in the C++ configuration options of your project preferences.

Using Git and Orocos

Getting started with git

For a very good git introduction, see Using git without feeling stupid part 1 and part 2 !

It's a 10 minutes read which really pays off.

You can use Eclipse Using Eclipse And Orocos or plain git (on Linux) or TortoiseGit (on Windows).

SVN users can use this reference for learning the first commands: http://git.or.cz/course/svn.htm... Click below to read the rest of this post.===Getting started with git=== For a very good git introduction, see Using git without feeling stupid part 1 and part 2 !

It's a 10 minutes read which really pays off.

You can use Eclipse Using Eclipse And Orocos or plain git (on Linux) or TortoiseGit (on Windows).

SVN users can use this reference for learning the first commands: http://git.or.cz/course/svn.html

Cloning the repository

The git repositories of the Orocos Toolchain (v2.x only) are located at http://github.com/orocos-toolchain .

Check out the rtt or ocl repositories and submit patches by using

 git clone git://github.com/orocos-toolchain/rtt.git
 cd orocos-rtt
...hack hack hack on master branch...
 git add <changed files>
 git commit
... repeat ...

Finally:

 git format-patch origin/master
And send out the resulting patch(es).

If origin/master moved forward, then do

 git fetch origin/master
 git rebase origin/master
Fetch copies the remote changes to your local repository, but doesn't update your current branch. rebase first removes your patches, the applies the fetched patches and then re-applies your personal patches on the fetched changes. In case of conflicts, see the tutorial on top of this page or man git-rebase