VxWorks® 7 ROS2 Build

VxWorks SDK and ROS 2 support

Wind River provides VxWorks ROS 2 build for selected SDKs and ROS 2 releases, see the following table for more details

	SR0640 SDK
dashing	Intel UP2 Raspberry Pi4

Overview

The VxWorks 7 ROS2 Build project provides a build environment to automate building ROS2 with a VxWorks SDK.

The Robot Operating System 2 is a set of software libraries and tools that aid in building robot applications. ROS2 is a re-architecture of the framework to include support for new use cases.

These new use cases include:

Teams of multiple robots
Small embedded platforms
Real-time systems
Non-ideal networks
Production environment
Design patterns for building and structuring systems

The default configuration build configuration will build a minimal set of ROS2 packages necessary for running the Turtlebot 3 and example Python and C++ applications.

This configuration is suited for prototyping and personal use. Please refer to the details of each individual ROS2 package for details on what requirements and terms of use they may have.

NOTE: ROS2 is not part of any VxWorks® product. If you need help, use the resources available or contact your Wind River sales representative to arrange for consulting services.

Project License

The source code for this project is provided under the Apache 2.0 license license. Text for the ROS2 dependencies and other applicable license notices can be found in the LICENSE file in the project top level directory. Different files may be under different licenses. Each source file should include a license notice that designates the licensing terms for the respective file.

NOTE: Your use of the VxWorks SDK is subject to the non-commercial use license agreement that accompanies the software (the "License"). To review the License, please read the file NCLA.txt which can be viewed from a browser here: Non-Commercial License Agreement.

By downloading, installing or using the software, you acknowledge that you have read, understand, and are agreeing to the terms of the License. Subject to the License, you can proceed to download the VxWorks SDK.

Prerequisite(s)

Download a VxWorks Software Development Kit from Wind River Labs
- https://labs.windriver.com/downloads/wrsdk_prev.html
The build system will need to download source code from github.com and bitbucket.org. A working Internet connection with access to both sites is required.

For the standard build you must also have:

Supported Linux host for both ROS2 and VxWorks 7
- ROS 2.0 Target Platforms
  - http://www.ros.org/reps/rep-2000.html
- VxWorks 7 SR0640
  - https://docs.windriver.com/bundle/vxworks_7_release_notes_sr0640/page/bym1551818657142.html
- For ROS2 Dashing Diademata, Ubuntu Bionic (18.04) 64-bit LTS is the Tier 1 host
Install the development tools and ROS tools from “Building ROS 2 on Linux”
- https://index.ros.org/doc/ros2/Installation/Dashing/Linux-Development-Setup/
Install the “Required Linux Host OS Packages” for VxWorks 7
- https://docs.windriver.com/bundle/2020_03_Workbench_Release_Notes_SR0640_1/page/age1436590316395.html
Mercurial (hg) package for Eigen (optional)

Directory Structure

The project uses Makefile to invoke a ros2 and turtlebot3 colcon based build, and also builds some dependencies.

├── Docker          - Dockefiles used to build ROS 2
├── Makefile
├── pkg
│   ├── asio        - Fast-RTPS dependency
│   ├── colcon      - host tool to build ROS2
│   ├── python      - python 3.8 version used by VxWorks
│   ├── ros2        - ROS 2 middleware
│   ├── sdk         - various SDK improvements necessary to build ROS2
│   ├── tinyxml2    - ROS2 dependency
│   ├── turtlebot3  - Turtlebot3 packages
│   └── unixextra   - extra Unix functions necessary to build ROS2

After the build following artifacs will be created:

├── build      - pkg build artifacts
    ├── asio
    ├── colcon
    ├── python
    ├── ros2
        ├── patches
        └── ros2_ws - ROS2 workspace
    ├── tinyxml2
    └── unixextra
├── downloads  - download artifacts
├── export     
    ├── deploy - a ready-to-deploy filesystem with ROS2 libraries and binaries
    └── root   - a development artifacts with ROS2 libraries and headers

ROS2 VxWorks patches

Patches are necessary to build ROS2 for VxWorks which are located in the separate repository The repository is cloned during the build to the patches dir

├── build
│   ├── ros2
│   │   ├── patches

Build ROS2 and its dependecies

Clone this repository using the `master` branch

git clone https://github.com/Wind-River/vxworks7-ros2-build.git
cd vxworks7-ros2-build

Build Docker image

A Docker (Ubuntu 18.04) based build is recommended to avoid a necessity of installing build dependencies.

docker build -t vxbuild:1.0 Docker/vxbuild/.
docker build -t vxros2build:1.0 Docker/vxros2build/.

Download and extract the VxWorks SDK

The SDK for IA - UP Squared shall be used from https://labs.windriver.com/downloads/wrsdk_prev.html

cd Downloads
wget https://labs.windriver.com/downloads/wrsdk-vxworks7-up2-1.7.tar.bz2
tar –jxvf wrsdk-vxworks7-up2-1.7.tar.bz2

Run Docker image

cd vxworks7-ros2-build
docker run -ti -v ~/Downloads/wrsdk-vxworks7-up2:/wrsdk -v $PWD:/work vxros2build:1.0

By default it runs as a user wruser with uid=1000(wruser) gid=1000(wruser), if you have different ids, run it as

$ docker run -ti -e UID=`id -u` -e GID=`id -g` -v ~/Downloads/wrsdk-vxworks7-up2:/wrsdk -v $PWD:/work vxros2build:1.0

See Dockerfile for the complete list of environment variables

Start build

Inside Docker container: source the development environment and start build

wruser@d19165730517:/work source /wrsdk/toolkit/wind_sdk_env.linux
wruser@d19165730517:/work make
wruser@d19165730517:/work exit

Build artifacts are in the export directory

wruser@d19165730517:/work ls export/deploy/
bin  lib

Rebuild from scratch

wruser@d19165730517:/work make distclean
wruser@d19165730517:/work make
wruser@d19165730517:/work exit

It could be that the build fails if it runs behind the firewall, see #22. In this case rerun it without a certificate check as

wruser@d19165730517:/work WGET_OPT="--no-check-certificate -O" CURL="" make

Run ROS2 examples

QEMU is used to boot VxWorks and run Python and C++ ROS2 examples, for that tap0 interface shall be configured.

sudo apt-get install uml-utilities
sudo tunctl -u $USER -t tap0
sudo ifconfig tap0 192.168.200.254 up

VxWorks is tested with

$ qemu-system-x86_64 --version
QEMU emulator version 6.2.0 (Debian 1:6.2+dfsg-2ubuntu6.2)
Copyright (c) 2003-2021 Fabrice Bellard and the QEMU Project developers

Filesystem with ROS2 artifacts needs to be prepared to boot with VxWorks.

Create an HDD image

Run QEMU with a prebuilt VxWorks kernel and a created HDD image.

# create a disk 800MB
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=ros2.img count=800 bs=1M
# format it as a FAT32
$ mkfs.vfat -F 32 ./ros2.img

# mount, copy, unmount, you need to be `sudo`
$ mkdir -p ~/tmp/mount
$ sudo mount -o loop -t vfat ./ros2.img ~/tmp/mount
$ sudo cp -r -L ./export/deploy/* ~/tmp/mount/.
$ sudo umount ~/tmp/mount

sudo qemu-system-x86_64 -m 512M -kernel ~/Downloads/wrsdk-vxworks7-up2/bsps/itl_generic_2_0_2_1/boot/vxWorks -net nic -net tap,ifname=tap0,script=no,downscript=no -display none -serial stdio -append "bootline:fs(0,0)host:/vxWorks h=192.168.200.254 e=192.168.200.1 u=ftp pw=ftp123 o=gei0 s=/ata4/vxscript" -device ich9-ahci,id=ahci -drive file=./ros2.img,if=none,id=ros2disk,format=raw -device ide-hd,drive=ros2disk,bus=ahci.0

The HDD image will be mounted inside VxWorks under /usr directory

-> ls "/usr"
/usr/bin
/usr/lib
/usr/share
/usr/vxscript

Telnet to the VxWorks QEMU target

telnet 192.168.200.1

Run ROS2 C++ examples

It is possible to run examples by directly invoking binaries

-> cmd
[vxWorks *]# /usr/lib/examples_rclcpp_minimal_timer/timer_lambda
Launching process 'timer_lambda' ...
Process 'timer_lambda' (process Id = 0xffff80000046f070) launched.
[INFO] [minimal_timer]: Hello, world!
[INFO] [minimal_timer]: Hello, world!

Or by using the ros2cli interface

-> cmd
[vxWorks *]# python3 ros2 run examples_rclcpp_minimal_timer timer_lambda
Launching process 'python3' ...
Process 'python3' (process Id = 0xffff800008268ac0) launched.
[INFO] [minimal_timer]: Hello, world!
[INFO] [minimal_timer]: Hello, world!

Run ROS2 Python examples

It is possible to run examples by directly invoking python scripts. First figure out the full path.

[vxWorks *]# python3 ros2 pkg executables --full-path demo_nodes_py
 Launching process 'python3' ...
 Process 'python3' (process Id = 0xffff80000046f070) launched.
/usr/lib/demo_nodes_py/add_two_ints_client
/usr/lib/demo_nodes_py/add_two_ints_client_async
/usr/lib/demo_nodes_py/add_two_ints_server
/usr/lib/demo_nodes_py/listener
/usr/lib/demo_nodes_py/listener_qos
/usr/lib/demo_nodes_py/listener_serialized
/usr/lib/demo_nodes_py/talker
/usr/lib/demo_nodes_py/talker_qos

Then Invoke Python interpreter and pass the script as a parameter

[vxWorks *]# python3 /usr/lib/demo_nodes_py/talker
[INFO] [talker]: Publishing: "Hello World: 0"
[INFO] [talker]: Publishing: "Hello World: 1"

Or by using the ros2cli interface

[vxWorks *]# python3 ros2 run demo_nodes_py talker
Launching process 'python3' ...
Process 'python3' (process Id = 0xffff800008269c00) launched.

[INFO] [talker]: Publishing: "Hello World: 0"
[INFO] [talker]: Publishing: "Hello World: 1"

Build a simple CMake based OSS project

$ cd vxworks7-ros2-build
$ docker run -ti -v ~/Downloads/wrsdk-vxworks7-up2:/wrsdk -v $PWD:/work vxros2build:1.0
wruser@690af330acaa:/work$ source /wrsdk/toolkit/wind_sdk_env.linux

wruser@690af330acaa:/work$ git clone https://github.com/ttroy50/cmake-examples.git
wruser@690af330acaa:/work$ cd cmake-examples/01-basic/A-hello-cmake; mkdir vxworks-build; cd vxworks-build
wruser@690af330acaa:/work/cmake-examples/01-basic/A-hello-cmake/vxworks-build$ cmake .. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/work/buildspecs/cmake/toolchain.cmake
-- The C compiler identification is Clang 9.0.1
-- The CXX compiler identification is Clang 9.0.1
-- Check for working C compiler: /wrsdk/toolkit/host_tools/x86_64-linux/bin/wr-cc
-- Check for working C compiler: /wrsdk/toolkit/host_tools/x86_64-linux/bin/wr-cc -- works
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info
-- Detecting C compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting C compile features
-- Detecting C compile features - done
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /wrsdk/toolkit/host_tools/x86_64-linux/bin/wr-c++
-- Check for working CXX compiler: /wrsdk/toolkit/host_tools/x86_64-linux/bin/wr-c++ -- works
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info
-- Detecting CXX compiler ABI info - done
-- Detecting CXX compile features
-- Detecting CXX compile features - done
-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /work/cmake-examples/01-basic/A-hello-cmake/vxworks-build

wruser@690af330acaa:/work/cmake-examples/01-basic/A-hello-cmake/vxworks-build$ make
Scanning dependencies of target hello_cmake
[ 50%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/hello_cmake.dir/main.cpp.o
[100%] Linking CXX executable hello_cmake
[100%] Built target hello_cmake

Native ROS2 compilation

Native ROS2 is used mostly for the fast prototyping during the ROS 2 development. Use the same docker image for that.

$ cd vxworks7-ros2-build
$ docker run -ti -h ros2native -v $PWD:/work vxros2build:1.0
wruser@ros2native:/work$ mkdir -p ros2_native/src && cd ros2_native
wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native$ vcs import src < /work/build/ros2/ros2_ws/ros2.repos
wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native$ colcon build --merge-install --cmake-force-configure --packages-up-to-regex examples_rcl* ros2action ros2component ros2msg ros2node ros2pkg ros2service ros2topic ros2cli ros2lifecycle ros2multicast ros2param ros2run ros2srv pendulum_control --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Debug -DBUILD_TESTING:BOOL=OFF

wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native/install$ source setup.bash
wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native/install$ ros2 run demo_nodes_py talker
[INFO] [talker]: Publishing: "Hello World: 0"
[INFO] [talker]: Publishing: "Hello World: 1"

VxWorks ROS2 development

The following example shows how to develop and run ROS2 package called my_package under VxWorks. It is recommended to prototype it first under the native ROS 2 build environment that contains the same ROS 2 version as a VxWorks one. After package is developed and tested, it can be copied and compiled under VxWorks ROS2 build environment.

Step 1: create and test new ROS2 package under native ROS2 build environment

Follow the procedure of how to prepare native ROS2 build environment.
Create a new ROS2 package

wruser@ros2native:/work$ cd ros2_native/src
wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native/src$ source ../install/setup.bash
wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native/src$ ros2 pkg create --build-type ament_cmake my_package
going to create a new package
package name: my_package
destination directory: /work/ros2_ws/src
package format: 3
version: 0.0.0
description: TODO: Package description
maintainer: ['wruser <wruser@todo.todo>']
licenses: ['TODO: License declaration']
build type: ament_cmake
dependencies: []
creating folder ./my_package
creating ./my_package/package.xml
creating source and include folder
creating folder ./my_package/src
creating folder ./my_package/include/my_package
creating ./my_package/CMakeLists.txt

Create my_package.cpp file

wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native/src$ cd my_package/src
wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native/src/my_package/src$ cat > my_package.cpp <<EOF
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{
  cout << "Hello World!" << endl;
  return 0;
}
EOF

Modify CMakeLists.txt to build my_package

Add the following lines to the CMakeLists.txt before if(BUILD_TESTING)

add_executable(my_package src/my_package.cpp)

install(TARGETS
  my_package
  DESTINATION lib/${PROJECT_NAME}
)

You can use sed for it.

wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native/src/my_package$ sed -i '/find_package(<depen/aadd_executable(my_package src/my_package.cpp)\ninstall(TARGETS\n  my_package\n  DESTINATION lib/\${PROJECT_NAME}\n)' CMakeLists.txt

Build my_package

wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native/src/my_package$ cd ../..
wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native$ colcon build --merge-install --packages-up-to my_package

Run my_package

wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_native$
wruser@ros2native:/work/ros2_ws/install$ ros2 run my_package my_package
Hello World!

Step 2: Build and run new ROS2 package under VxWorks ROS2 build environment

Start docker and copy my_package to the VxWorks ros2_ws workspace

$ docker run -ti -v ~/Downloads/wrsdk-vxworks7-up2:/wrsdk -v $PWD:/work vxros2build:1.0
wruser@690af330acaa:/work$ cp -r ros2_native/src/my_package build/ros2/ros2_ws/src/.

Rebuild ROS2 with my_package

wruser@690af330acaa:/work$ source /wrsdk/toolkit/wind_sdk_env.linux
wruser@690af330acaa:/work$ rm /work/build/.stamp/ros2.build
wruser@690af330acaa:/work$ PKG_PKGS_UP_TO=my_package DEFAULT_BUILD=ros2 make
wruser@690af330acaa:/work$ exit

Create ros2.img as described here and start QEMU

$ sudo qemu-system-x86_64 -m 512M -kernel ~/Downloads/wrsdk-vxworks7-up2/bsps/itl_generic_2_0_2_1/boot/vxWorks -net nic -net tap,ifname=tap0,script=no,downscript=no -display none -serial stdio -append "bootline:fs(0,0)host:/vxWorks h=192.168.200.254 e=192.168.200.1 u=ftp pw=ftp123 o=gei0 s=/ata4/vxscript" -device ich9-ahci,id=ahci -drive file=./ros2.img,if=none,id=ros2disk,format=raw -device ide-hd,drive=ros2disk,bus=ahci.0

Setup environment variables and run my_package

-> cmd
[vxWorks *]# python3 ros2 run my_package my_package
Launching process 'python3' ...
Process 'python3' (process Id = 0xffff80000036cb10) launched.
Hello World!

Legal Notices

All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this software are for identification purposes only. Wind River and VxWorks are registered trademarks of Wind River Systems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group.

Disclaimer of Warranty / No Support: Wind River does not provide support and maintenance services for this software, under Wind River’s standard Software Support and Maintenance Agreement or otherwise. Unless required by applicable law, Wind River provides the software (and each contributor provides its contribution) on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties of TITLE, NONINFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the software and assume any risks associated with your exercise of permissions under the license.

Laicize/vxworks7-ros2-build