eProsima Fast RTPS

eprosima Fast RTPS is a C++ implementation of the RTPS (Real Time Publish Subscribe) protocol, which provides publisher-subscriber communications over unreliable transports such as UDP, as defined and maintained by the Object Management Group (OMG) consortium. RTPS is also the wire interoperability protocol defined for the Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard, again by the OMG. eProsima Fast RTPS holds the benefit of being standalone and up-to-date, as most vendor solutions either implement RTPS as a tool to implement DDS or use past versions of the specification.

Some of the main features of this library are:

• Configurable best-effort and reliable publish-subscribe communication policies for real-time applications.
• Plug and play connectivity so that any new applications are automatically discovered by any other members of the network.
• Modularity and scalability to allow continuous growth with complex and simple devices in the network.
• Configurable network behavior and interchangeable transport layer: Choose the best protocol and system input/output channel combination for each deployment.
• Two API Layers: a high-level Publisher-Subscriber one focused on usability and a lower-level Writer-Reader one that provides finer access to the inner workings of the RTPS protocol.

eProsima Fast RTPS has been adopted by multiple organizations in many sectors including these important cases:

• Robotics: ROS (Robotic Operating System) as their default middleware for ROS2.
• EU R&D: FIWARE Incubated GE.

Supported platforms

• Linux
• Windows
• Mac

Installation Guide

You can get either a binary distribution of eprosima Fast RTPS or compile the library yourself from source.

Installation from binaries

The latest, up to date binary release of eprosima Fast RTPS can be obtained from the company website.

Installation from Source

Dependencies

Asio and TinyXML2 libraries

On Linux, you can install these libraries using the package manager of your Linux distribution. For example, on Ubuntu you can install them by using its package manager with the next command.

sudo apt install libasio-dev libtinyxml2-dev

On Windows, you can install these libraries using Chocolatey. First, download the following chocolatey packages from this ROS2 Github repository.

• asio.1.12.1.nupkg
• tinyxml2.6.0.0.nupkg

Once these packages are downloaded, open an administrative shell and execute the following command:

choco install -y -s <PATH\TO\DOWNLOADS\> asio tinyxml2

Please replace <PATH\TO\DOWNLOADS> with the folder you downloaded the packages to.

Colcon installation

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colcon is a command line tool to build sets of software packages. This section explains to use it to compile easily Fast-RTPS and its dependencies. First install ROS2 development tools (colcon and vcstool):

pip install -U colcon-common-extensions vcstool

Download the repos file that will be used to download Fast RTPS and its dependencies:

$ wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eProsima/Fast-RTPS/master/fastrtps.repos
$ mkdir src
$ vcs import src < fastrtps.repos

Finally, use colcon to compile all software:

$ colcon build

Manual installation

---

Before compiling manually Fast RTPS you need to clone the following dependencies and compile them using CMake.

• Fast CDR

  $ git clone https://github.com/eProsima/Fast-CDR.git
  $ mkdir Fast-CDR/build && cd Fast-CDR/build
  $ cmake ..
  $ cmake --build . --target install

• Foonathan memory

  $ git clone https://github.com/eProsima/foonathan_memory_vendor.git
  $ cd foonathan_memory_vendor
  $ mkdir build && cd build
  $ cmake ..
  $ cmake --build . --target install

Once all dependencies are installed, you will be able to compile and install Fast RTPS.

$ git clone https://github.com/eProsima/Fast-RTPS.git
$ mkdir Fast-RTPS/build && cd Fast-RTPS/build
$ cmake ..
$ cmake --build . --target install

Documentation

You can access the documentation online, which is hosted on Read the Docs.

• Start Page
• Installation manual
• User manual
• FastRTPSGen manual
• Release notes

Quick Demo

For those who want to try a quick demonstration of Fast-RTPS libraries on Ubuntu, here is a way to launch an example application.

First, download and install docker application. Open a terminal and type the following command

$ sudo apt-get install docker.io

Then, download the docker image file from https://eprosima.com/index.php/downloads-all

Load the image and run it:

$ docker load -i ubuntu-fast-rtps.tar
$ docker run -it ubuntu-fast-rtps

You can run as many images as you want and check the communication between them.

Getting Help

If you need support you can reach us by mail at support@eProsima.com or by phone at +34 91 804 34 48.