Install it!

We introduced in the previous article OpenDDS, that allows us to exchange data over the network in an easy way. Now we'll discuss how to build and install it.

We'll cover the installation from source of OpenDDS 3.9, for both Windows (using Visual Studio 2015) and Linux (Ubuntu 64 bit). We'll cover only the C++ part. I'm not personally interested in the Java part so if you want to use OpenDDS with Java I'm sure that you'll find a lot of documentation around the web.

Build on Ubuntu

Prerequisites

In order to build OpenDDS, some package must be installed in Ubuntu. so install needed packages with this command:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

There are other packages that should be downloaded in order to obtain additional features. They are not mandatory anyway:

$ sudo apt-get install libxerces-c-dev qt4-dev-tools libboost-all-dev libglib2.0-dev

Download

You can download OpenDDS directly from the OpenDDS site. Open a terminal and in the folder that you want to download it, write following command:

$ wget https://github.com/objectcomputing/OpenDDS/releases/download/DDS-3.9/OpenDDS-3.9.tar.gz
$ tar xvvf OpenDDS-3.9.tar.gz

This will download the package, and then we unpack it to its folder.

Build

After the unpacking we are ready to build OpenDDS. Enter the folder and use the usual configure command:

$ cd OpenDDS-3.9
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local

If you want to build also optional components:

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --boost --glib --rapidjson --qt

The command will download missing dependencies (ACE and TAO) and it will perform some preparation for the compilation. When it's finished for building OpenDDS write the usual command:

$ make

It will take a while, so you can go to take a coffee if you want...

At the end, you should have in the build directory OpenDDS ready to be used.

Installation

 With the --prefix=/usr/local we set the directory in which we want to install OpenDDS, so now simply make

$ sudo make install

Test

In order to check if the everything is ok with the installation, we can check that OpenDDS works as expected. It comes with a series of tests that can be run from a perl script. In order to run tests the can use the following command:

$ export DDS_ROOT=/path/to/OpenDDS
$ export ACE_ROOT=/path/to/OpenDDS/ACE_wrappers
$ export TAO_ROOT=/path/to/OpenDDS/ACE_wrappers
$ cd /path/to/OpenDDS/bin
$ ./auto_run_tests.pl

The environment variables are needed by the perl script that runs the tests. At this point tests will start and at the end  a summary should say that everything is ok. If you want you can go to take a piece of cake, because these test will last much, at least one our.

Congratulations, you've installed OpenDDS in your Ubuntu machine! 

Build on Windows

Download

You can download OpenDDS directly from the OpenDDS site, like the Linux release. Simply download the windows version.

If you like consoles, you can download it from powershell:

Invoke-WebRequest https://github.com/objectcomputing/OpenDDS/releases/download/DDS-3.9/OpenDDS-3.9.zip -OutFile OpenDDS-3.9.zip

This will download the file. In order to unzip the file, since you're in Powershell:

Expand-Archive .\\OpenDDS-3.9.zip

Perl

Compilation in windows requires a perl installation, like ActiveState Perl. Download and install it before continuing.

Qt

Also in this case you can use Qt as optional component. The latest major version supported is Qt4, so if you want to use it download and install it for your compiler. Since I'm using Visual Studio 2015, and a precompiled package is not provided, I download sources at this link, and then I build it by myself.

Build it by yourself if you don't have precompiled packages. Or don't use qt at all, they are optional after all...

Boost

Like Qt, also Boost are an optional component, but considering its importance, I suggest you to use it in OpenDDS, and also in other your projects. Refer to Boost homepage for more details and explanations on how to build it.

Build

The build will be performed with Visual Studio. If not, you can download and install it from Visual Studio homepage. Be sure to install the C++ language when installing it.

In order to build OpenDDS, we need the Visual Studio environment. The easiest thing to do in order to have it is to open a shell directly from a Visual Studio command. In Windows Start Menu find your Visual Studio folder and open the command prompt that you want (i.e. VS2015 x64 Native Tools Command Prompt).

Go in the folder where OpenDDS was extracted and it's possible to execute the configure command:

> configure

This will download ACE and TAO and configure the environment.

When commands ends. it's necessary to build the generated solution. You can start Visual Studio directly from the command prompt, just after setting the environment variables with the command created by the configuration:

> setenv.cmd
> devenv

At this point Visual Studio Will start and the Generated solution DDS_TAOv2_all can be opened and built. I suggest to build both Debug and Release configurations.

Test

When compilation ends, everything should be ok. It's possible to check if everything is ok by executing some binary file. Open your console, set following commands:

> set DDS_ROOT=path\\to\\OpenDDS
> set ACE_ROOT=path\\to\\OpenDDS\\ACE_wrappers
> set TAO_ROOT=path\\to\\OpenDDS\\ACE_wrappers
> set PATH=path\\to\\OpenDDS\\lib;path\\to\\OpenDDS\\ACE_wrappers\\lib;%PATH%
> cd path\\to\\OpenDDS\\bin
> perl auto_run_tests.pl

The test suite will start. Take a sandwich if you want, these tests will last much time.

Conclusions

In this article we have downloaded and build OpenDDS for both Windows and Ubuntu operating systems. In next articles we'll see how to use it.

See you later!

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