2. Windows installation from sources¶

The instructions for installing the eProsima Fast DDS Spy application from sources and its required dependencies are provided in this page. It is organized as follows:

Dependencies installation
- Requirements
- Dependencies
Colcon installation (recommended)
CMake installation
Run an application

2.1. Dependencies installation¶

eProsima Fast DDS Spy depends on eProsima Fast DDS library and certain Debian packages. This section describes the instructions for installing eProsima Fast DDS Spy dependencies and requirements in a Windows environment from sources. The following packages will be installed:

foonathan_memory_vendor, an STL compatible C++ memory allocation library.
fastcdr, a C++ library that serializes according to the standard CDR serialization mechanism.
fastrtps, the core library of eProsima Fast DDS library.
cmake_utils, an eProsima utils library for CMake.
cpp_utils, an eProsima utils library for C++.
ddspipe, an eProsima internal library that enables the communication of DDS interfaces.

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.

2.1.1. Requirements¶

The installation of eProsima Fast DDS in a Windows environment from sources requires the following tools to be installed in the system:

Visual Studio
Chocolatey
CMake, pip3, wget and git
Colcon [optional]
Gtest [for test only]

2.1.1.1. Visual Studio¶

Visual Studio is required to have a C++ compiler in the system. For this purpose, make sure to check the Desktop development with C++ option during the Visual Studio installation process.

If Visual Studio is already installed but the Visual C++ Redistributable packages are not, open Visual Studio and go to Tools -> Get Tools and Features and in the Workloads tab enable Desktop development with C++. Finally, click Modify at the bottom right.

2.1.1.2. Chocolatey¶

Chocolatey is a Windows package manager. It is needed to install some of eProsima Fast DDS’s dependencies. Download and install it directly from the website.

2.1.1.3. CMake, pip3, wget and git¶

These packages provide the tools required to install eProsima Fast DDS and its dependencies from command line. Download and install CMake, pip3, wget and git by following the instructions detailed in the respective websites. Once installed, add the path to the executables to the PATH from the Edit the system environment variables control panel.

2.1.1.4. Colcon¶

colcon is a command line tool based on CMake aimed at building sets of software packages. Install the ROS 2 development tools (colcon and vcstool) by executing the following command:

pip3 install -U colcon-common-extensions vcstool

Note

If this fails due to an Environment Error, add the --user flag to the pip3 installation command.

2.1.1.5. Gtest¶

Gtest is a unit testing library for C++. By default, eProsima Fast DDS Spy does not compile tests. It is possible to activate them with the opportune CMake options when calling colcon or CMake. For more details, please refer to the CMake options section.

Run the following commands on your workspace to install Gtest.

git clone https://github.com/google/googletest.git
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX='C:\Program Files\gtest' -Dgtest_force_shared_crt=ON -DBUILD_GMOCK=ON ^
    -B build\gtest -A x64 -T host=x64 googletest
cmake --build build\gtest --config Release --target install

or refer to the Gtest Installation Guide for a detailed description of the Gtest installation process.

2.1.2. Dependencies¶

eProsima Fast DDS Spy has the following dependencies, when installed from sources in a Windows environment:

Asio and TinyXML2 libraries
OpenSSL
yaml-cpp
eProsima dependencies

2.1.2.1. 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. They can be downloaded directly from the links below:

After downloading these packages, open an administrative shell with PowerShell and execute the following command:

choco install -y -s <PATH_TO_DOWNLOADS> asio tinyxml2

where <PATH_TO_DOWNLOADS> is the folder into which the packages have been downloaded.

2.1.2.2. OpenSSL¶

OpenSSL is a robust toolkit for the TLS and SSL protocols and a general-purpose cryptography library. Download and install the latest OpenSSL version for Windows at this link. After installing, add the environment variable OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR pointing to the installation root directory.

For example:

OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=C:\Program Files\OpenSSL-Win64

2.1.2.3. yaml-cpp¶

yaml-cpp is a YAML parser and emitter in C++ matching the YAML 1.2 spec, and is used by Fast DDS Spy application to parse the provided configuration files. From an administrative shell with PowerShell, execute the following commands in order to download and install yaml-cpp for Windows:

git clone --branch yaml-cpp-0.7.0 https://github.com/jbeder/yaml-cpp
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX='C:\Program Files\yamlcpp' -B build\yamlcpp yaml-cpp
cmake --build build\yamlcpp --target install    # If building in Debug mode, add --config Debug

2.1.2.4. eProsima dependencies¶

If it already exists in the system an installation of Fast DDS and DDS Pipe libraries, just source this libraries when building the eProsima Fast DDS Spy application by using the command:

source <fastdds-installation-path>/install/setup.bash
source <ddspipe-installation-path>/install/setup.bash

In other case, just skip this step.

2.2. Colcon installation (recommended)¶

Important

Run colcon within a Visual Studio prompt. To do so, launch a Developer Command Prompt from the search engine.

Create a Fast-DDS-Spy directory and download the .repos file that will be used to install eProsima Fast DDS Spy and its dependencies:
```
mkdir <path\to\user\workspace>\Fast-DDS-Spy
cd <path\to\user\workspace>\Fast-DDS-Spy
mkdir src
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eProsima/Fast-DDS-Spy/main/fastddsspy.repos
vcs import src < fastddsspy.repos
```
Note

In case there is already a Fast DDS installation in the system it is not required to download and build every dependency in the .repos file. It is just needed to download and build the eProsima Fast DDS Spy project having sourced its dependencies. Refer to section eProsima dependencies in order to check how to source Fast DDS library.

Build the packages:

colcon build --packages-up-to-regex fastddsspy

Note

Being based on CMake, it is possible to pass the CMake configuration options to the colcon build command. For more information on the specific syntax, please refer to the CMake specific arguments page of the colcon manual.

2.3. CMake installation¶

There exist the possibility to install Fast DDS Spy by CMake, and could be see in following section. However Colcon installation is recommended.

2.4. Run an application¶

If the eProsima Fast DDS Spy was compiled using colcon, when running an instance of a Fast DDS Spy, the colcon overlay built in the dedicated fastdds-spy directory must be sourced. There are two possibilities:

Every time a new shell is opened, prepare the environment locally by typing the command:
```
setup.bat
fastddsspy
```
Add the sourcing of the colcon overlay permanently, by opening the Edit the system environment variables control panel, and adding the installation path to the PATH.

However, when running an instance of a Fast DDS Spy compiled using CMake, it must be linked with its dependencies where the packages have been installed. This can be done by opening the Edit system environment variables control panel and adding to the PATH the eProsima Fast DDS Spy, Fast DDS, Fast CDR, DDS Pipe installation directories:

Fast DDS: C:\\Program Files\\fastrtps
Fast CDR: C:\\Program Files\\fastcdr
DDS Pipe: C:\\Program Files\\ddspipe
eProsima Fast DDS Spy: C:\\Program Files\\ddsrecord