5. Mac OS installation from sources
The instructions for installing both the Fast DDS library and the Fast DDS-Gen generation tool from sources are provided in this page. It is organized as follows:
5.1. Fast DDS library installation
This section describes the instructions for installing eProsima Fast DDS in a Mac OS environment from sources. The following packages will be installed:
foonathan_memory_vendor
, an STL compatible C++ memory allocator library.fastdds_gen
, a Java application that generates source code using the data types defined in an IDL file.fastcdr
, a C++ library that serializes according to the standard CDR serialization mechanism.fastdds
, the core library of eProsima Fast DDS library.
First of all, the Requirements and Dependencies detailed below need to be met. Afterwards, the user can choose whether to follow either the colcon) or the CMake) installation instructions.
5.1.1. Requirements
The installation of eProsima Fast DDS in a MacOS environment from sources requires the following tools to be installed in the system:
Gtest [optional]
XML validation tool [optional]
5.1.1.1. Homebrew
Homebrew is a macOS package manager, it is needed to install some of eProsima Fast DDS’s dependencies. To install it open a terminal window and run the following command.
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
5.1.1.2. Xcode Command Line Tools
The Xcode command line tools package is separate from Xcode and allows for command line development in mac. The previous step should have installed Xcode CLI, to check the correct installation run the following command:
gcc --version
5.1.1.3. CMake, g++, pip3, wget and git
These packages provide the tools required to install eProsima Fast DDS and its dependencies from command line. Install CMake, pip3 and wget using the Homebrew package manager:
brew install cmake python3 wget
5.1.1.4. Gtest
GTest is a unit testing library for C++. By default, eProsima Fast DDS does not compile tests. It is possible to activate them with the opportune CMake configuration options when calling colcon or CMake. For more details, please refer to the CMake options section. Also add the Gtest repository into the workspace directory.
git clone --branch release-1.11.0 https://github.com/google/googletest src/googletest-distribution
5.1.1.5. XML validation tool
XML validation is a new command introduced to validate the XML profiles against an XSD schema through Fast DDS CLI. That ensures the proper characterization of the entities using the xml profiles.
For more details, please refer to the xml section.
Install the xmlschema dependency to be able to use this optional tool.
5.1.2. Dependencies
eProsima Fast DDS has the following dependencies, when installed from binaries in a Linux environment:
See also
For further information about this Fast DDS version dependencies, as well as for the corresponding versions of other related products, please refer to the Fast DDS Library dependencies section.
5.1.2.1. Asio and TinyXML2 libraries
Asio is a cross-platform C++ library for network and low-level I/O programming, which provides a consistent asynchronous model. TinyXML2 is a simple, small and efficient C++ XML parser. Install these libraries using Homebrew:
brew install asio tinyxml2
5.1.2.2. OpenSSL
OpenSSL is a robust toolkit for the TLS and SSL protocols and a general-purpose cryptography library. Install OpenSSL using Homebrew:
brew install openssl@1.1
5.1.3. Colcon installation
colcon is a command line tool based on CMake aimed at building sets of software packages. This section explains how to use it to compile eProsima Fast DDS and its dependencies.
Install the ROS 2 development tools (colcon and vcstool) by executing the following command:
pip3 install -U colcon-common-extensions vcstool
Create a
Fast-DDS
directory and download the repos file that will be used to install eProsima Fast DDS and its dependencies:mkdir ~/Fast-DDS cd ~/Fast-DDS wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eProsima/Fast-DDS/master/fastdds.repos mkdir src vcs import src < fastdds.repos
Build the packages:
colcon build --packages-up-to fastdds
Note
The --cmake-args
option allows to pass the CMake configuration options to the colcon build
command.
In Mac OS the location of OpenSSL is not found automatically and therefore has to be passed explicitly:
--cmake-args -DOPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=/usr/local/opt/openssl -DOPENSSL_LIBRARIES=/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib
.
This is only required when building with Security.
For more information on the specific syntax, please refer to the CMake specific arguments page of the colcon
manual.
5.1.3.1. Run an application
When running an instance of an application using eProsima Fast DDS, the colcon overlay built in the
dedicated Fast-DDS
directory must be sourced.
There are two possibilities:
Every time a new shell is opened, prepare the environment locally by typing the command:
source ~/Fast-DDS/install/setup.bash
Add the sourcing of the colcon overlay permanently to the
PATH
, by typing the following:touch ~/.bash_profile echo 'source ~/Fast-DDS/install/setup.bash' >> ~/.bash_profile
5.1.4. CMake installation
This section explains how to compile eProsima Fast DDS with CMake, either locally or globally.
5.1.4.1. Local installation
Create a
Fast-DDS
directory where to download and build eProsima Fast DDS and its dependencies:mkdir ~/Fast-DDS
Clone the following dependencies and compile them using CMake.
-
cd ~/Fast-DDS git clone https://github.com/eProsima/foonathan_memory_vendor.git mkdir foonathan_memory_vendor/build cd foonathan_memory_vendor/build cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/Fast-DDS/install -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON sudo cmake --build . --target install
-
cd ~/Fast-DDS git clone https://github.com/eProsima/Fast-CDR.git mkdir Fast-CDR/build cd Fast-CDR/build cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/Fast-DDS/install sudo cmake --build . --target install
-
Once all dependencies are installed, install eProsima Fast DDS:
cd ~/Fast-DDS git clone https://github.com/eProsima/Fast-DDS.git mkdir Fast-DDS/build cd Fast-DDS/build cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/Fast-DDS/install -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=~/Fast-DDS/install sudo cmake --build . --target install
Note
By default, eProsima Fast DDS does not compile tests. However, they can be activated by downloading and installing Gtest.
5.1.4.2. Global installation
To install eProsima Fast DDS system-wide instead of locally, remove all the flags that
appear in the configuration steps of Fast-CDR
and Fast-DDS
, and change the first in the
configuration step of foonathan_memory_vendor
to the following:
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local/ -DBUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON
5.1.4.3. Run an application
When running an instance of an application using eProsima Fast DDS, it must be linked with the library where the
packages have been installed, which in the case of system-wide installation is: /usr/local/lib/
(if local
installation is used, adjust for the correct directory).
There are two possibilities:
Prepare the environment locally by typing the command:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/
Add it permanently it to the
PATH
, by typing:touch ~/.bash_profile echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/' >> ~/.bash_profile
5.2. Fast DDS-Gen installation
This section provides the instructions for installing Fast DDS-Gen in a Mac OS environment from sources. Fast DDS-Gen is a Java application that generates source code using the data types defined in an IDL file. Please refer to Introduction for more information, and to eProsima products compatibility for the compatibility matrix against Fast DDS versions.
5.2.1. Requirements
Fast DDS-Gen is built using Gradle. Gradle is an open-source build automation tool which requires a Java version to be executed (see Gradle-Java compatibility matrix).
Important
Even though earlier versions of Gradle support Java 8, Fast DDS-Gen stopped supporting Java versions previous to Java 11 since release v2.4.0.
Important
Fast DDS-Gen introduced support for Gradle 7 in release v2.2.0. Gradle 8 is not yet supported.
See also
For further information about Fast DDS-Gen product related versions, please refer to the Library dependencies section.
5.2.1.1. Java JDK
The JDK is a development environment for building applications and components using the Java language. Download and install it following the steps given in the Oracle website.
Note
Fast DDS-Gen supports Java versions from 11 to 19.
5.2.2. Compiling Fast DDS-Gen
In order to compile Fast DDS-Gen, an executable script is included in the repository which will download Gradle temporarily for the compilation step. Please, follow the steps below to build Fast DDS-Gen:
Note
If Fast DDS has already been installed following Colcon installation, skip cloning Fast DDS-Gen’s
repository, as it can already be found under the src
directory within the colcon workspace.
mkdir -p ~/Fast-DDS/src
cd ~/Fast-DDS/src
git clone --recursive https://github.com/eProsima/Fast-DDS-Gen.git fastddsgen
cd fastddsgen
./gradlew assemble
Note
In case that a supported Gradle version is already installed in the system, Fast DDS-Gen can also be built running directly:
gradle assemble
5.2.2.1. Contents
The Fast-DDS-Gen
folder contains the following packages:
share/fastddsgen
, where the generated Java application is.scripts
, containing some user friendly scripts.Note
To make these scripts accessible from any shell session and directory, add the
scripts
folder path to thePATH
environment variable using the method described above.