Ecto is a hybrid C++/Python development framework for constructing and maintaining
pipelines. In Ecto, pipelines are constructed in terms of processing units, Cells,
connected by data paths, Tendrils, that form Directed Acyclic Graphs, Plasms.
Cells are typically written in C++, tendrils may be any type, and the plasm may
be executed in a variety of clever ways. Python is uses as a the graph DSL.
Ecto may be found useful in domains such as perception, audio, or robotics.
To get started see the online docs at http://ecto.willowgarage.com
These instructions are useful if you wish to work with Ecto from source, as a standalone library.
We use git for our source control. You can get a copy of our repo by doing the following:
git clone git://github.com/plasmodic/ecto.git
Ecto requires
- CMake
- CMake is used for our build system, and you will need a version >= 2.8
- Boost
- Anything over 1.40 http://www.boost.org
- Python
- Ecto should work with 2.6 and up. You should have the development libraries. If you are bellow 2.7 you should install the argparse library
- optional Sphinx
- Docs are built with sphinx, >= v1.0.7
- optional gtest
- http://code.google.com/p/googletest
On ubuntu you can get most of these through apt:
sudo apt-get install cmake libboost-all-dev python-dev python-argparse python-yaml libgtest-dev
To build the docs, you should use a very recent version of Sphinx:
sudo easy_install -U sphinx
To build you should just follow a normal cmake recipe:
cd ecto mkdir -p build cd build cmake .. make
To validate ecto using our test suite, you may:
cd ecto/build make ctest
This should report zero test errors. If it does report an error, please tell us about it here: https://github.com/plasmodic/ecto/issues/new
To create the latest documentation for Ecto:
sudo pip install -U catkin_sphinx sphinx-build -b html ./doc/source/ ./doc/build
To build documentation for the kitchen:
sphinx-build -b html ./doc/kitchen/ ./doc/build/
Then you can open up ecto/build/doc/html/index.html locally.
To install Ecto on your machine:
cd ecto/build make install
See the documentation (http://ecto.willowgarage.com) for detailed usage instructions.