Installation¶

Instructions to install Ignition Transport on all the platforms supported: major Linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows.

Next, you can see the major Ignition Transport versions, their availability and lifetime.

Version	Available on Ubuntu directly	Available on Ubuntu via OSRF	Available on MacOS via Homebrew tab	Since	EOL
0.y	`Ubuntu X`	`Ubuntu T`	–	February 2015	April 2021
1.y	`Ubuntu Y,Z`	`Ubuntu T,X`	`Yosemite,El Capitan`	February 2016	January 2018
2.y	–	`Ubuntu T,X,Y`	`Yosemite,El Capitan`	August 2016	TBD
3.y	–	`Ubuntu T,X,Y`	`Yosemite,El Capitan`	January 2017	TBD

Ubuntu Linux¶

Setup your computer to accept software from packages.osrfoundation.org:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable
`lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'

Setup keys:

wget http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Install Ignition Transport:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libignition-transport2-dev

Mac OS X¶

Ignition Transport and several of its dependencies can be compiled on OS X with Homebrew using the osrf/simulation tap. Ignition Transport is straightforward to install on Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) or higher. Installation on older versions requires changing the default standard library and rebuilding dependencies due to the use of c++11. For purposes of this documentation, I will assume OS X 10.9 or greater is in use. Here are the instructions:

Install homebrew, which should also prompt you to install the XCode command-line tools:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Run the following commands:

brew tap osrf/simulation
brew install ignition-transport2

Windows¶

At this moment, compilation has been tested on Windows 7 and 8.1 and is supported when using Visual Studio 2013. Patches for other versions are welcome.

This installation procedure uses pre-compiled binaries in a local workspace. To make things easier, use a MinGW shell for your editing work (such as the Git Bash Shell with Mercurial), and only use the Windows cmd for configuring and building. You might also need to disable the Windows firewall.

Make a directory to work in, e.g.:

mkdir ign-ws
cd ign-ws

Download the following dependencies into that directory:

cppzmq

Protobuf 2.6.0 (32-bit)

Protobuf 2.6.0 (64-bit)

Choose one of these options:

ZeroMQ 4.0.4 (32-bit)

ZeroMQ 4.0.4 (64-bit)

Unzip each of them. The Windows unzip utility will likely create an incorrect directory structure, where a directory with the name of the zip contains the directory that has the source files. Here is an example:

ign-ws/cppzmq-noarch/cppzmq

The correct structure is

ign-ws/cppzmq

To fix this problem, manually move the nested directories up one level.

Clone and prepare the Ignition Math dependency:

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/ignitionrobotics/ign-math
cd ign-math
mkdir build

In a Windows Command Prompt, load your compiler setup, e.g.:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" amd64

In the Windows Command Prompt, configure and build:

cd ign-math\build
..\configure
nmake install

Clone and prepare the Ignition Msgs dependency:

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/ignitionrobotics/ign-msgs
cd ign-msgs
mkdir build

In the Windows Command Prompt, configure and build:

cd ign-msgs\build
..\configure
nmake install

Clone ign-transport:

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/ignitionrobotics/ign-transport
cd ign-transport

In a Windows Command Prompt, load your compiler setup, e.g.:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" amd64

Configure and build:

mkdir build
cd build
..\configure
nmake
nmake install

You should now have an installation of ign-transport in ign-ws/ign-transport/build/install.

Before running any executables, you need to modify your PATH to include the bin subdirectory of ZeroMQ to let Windows find dynamic libs (similar to LD_LIBRARY_PATH on Linux). Don’t put quotes around the path, even if it contains spaces. E.g., if you’re working in C:\My Stuff\ign-ws:

set PATH %PATH%;C:\My Stuff\ign-ws\ZeroMQ 4.0.4\bin

Now build the examples:

cd ign-ws\ign-transport\example
mkdir build
cd build
..\configure
nmake

Now try an example. In one Windows terminal run:

responser

In another Windows terminal run:

requester

Install from sources (Ubuntu Linux)¶

For compiling the latest version of Ignition Transport you will need an Ubuntu distribution equal to 14.04.2 (Trusty) or newer.

Make sure you have removed the Ubuntu pre-compiled binaries before installing from source:

sudo apt-get remove libignition-transport2-dev

Install prerequisites. A clean Ubuntu system will need:

sudo apt-get install mercurial cmake pkg-config python ruby-ronn libprotoc-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler uuid-dev libzmq3-dev libignition-msgs-dev

Clone the repository into a directory and go into it:

hg clone https://bitbucket.org/ignitionrobotics/ign-transport /tmp/ign-transport
cd /tmp/ign-transport

Create a build directory and go there:

mkdir build
cd build

Configure Ignition Transport (choose either method a or b below):

Release mode: This will generate optimized code, but will not have debug symbols. Use this mode if you don’t need to use GDB.
cmake ../
Note: You can use a custom install path to make it easier to switch between source and debian installs:
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/$USER/local ../
B. Debug mode: This will generate code with debug symbols. Ignition Transport will run slower, but you’ll be able to use GDB.
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ../

The output from cmake ../ may generate a number of errors and warnings about missing packages. You must install the missing packages that have errors and re-run cmake ../. Make sure all the build errors are resolved before continuing (they should be there from the earlier step in which you installed prerequisites).

Make note of your install path, which is output from cmake and should look something like:

-- Install path: /home/$USER/local

Build Ignition Transport:

make -j4

Install Ignition Transport:

sudo make install

If you decide to install gazebo in a local directory you’ll need to modify your LD_LIBRARY_PATH:

echo "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<install_path>/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" >> ~/.bashrc

Uninstalling Source-based Install¶

If you need to uninstall Ignition Transport or switch back to a debian-based install when you currently have installed the library from source, navigate to your source code directory’s build folders and run make uninstall:

cd /tmp/ign-transport/build
sudo make uninstall