Installation & Usage (CPP)

💡 Recommendation: Quick Start If you want to get started with AimRT development quickly, we strongly recommend using the Development Container, which provides a pre-configured complete development environment without the need to manually install any dependencies.

System Requirements

Currently, AimRT officially supports the following operating systems and compiler suites:

  • Ubuntu 22.04

    • gcc-11.4

    • gcc-12.4

    • gcc-13.3

    • clang-15.0.7

    • clang-16.0.6

    • clang-17.0.6

    • clang-18.1.8

  • Windows

    • MSVC-1940

In addition to the systems listed above, theoretically all systems compatible with the above environments can compile and run AimRT.

Ubuntu 22.04 is the recommended system; all tests and binary packages are based on this system. On the Windows platform, only the MSVC compiler is supported and plugin support is relatively limited.

ROS2-related content currently only supports the humble version.

Installation Methods

Currently, AimRT’s C++ interface only supports installation from source.

Build from Source

Ubuntu Linux 22.04 Build from Source

Windows Build from Source

Usage Methods

When developing a C++ project, you can use AimRT in two ways:

  • [Recommended] Based on CMake FetchContent, referencing via source code;

  • After installation, based on CMake find_package for referencing;

AimRT is relatively lightweight, and we recommend users directly reference it based on source code.

Referencing via Source Code

You can reference AimRT with the following CMake code. Note that you need to change the GIT_TAG version to the version you want to reference:

include(FetchContent)

# set the version of AimRT to reference
FetchContent_Declare(
  aimrt
  GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/AimRT/aimrt.git
  GIT_TAG v1.x.x)

FetchContent_GetProperties(aimrt)

if(NOT aimrt_POPULATED)
  # Set some compilation options for AimRT
  set(AIMRT_BUILD_TESTS OFF CACHE BOOL "")
  set(AIMRT_BUILD_EXAMPLES OFF CACHE BOOL "")

  FetchContent_MakeAvailable(aimrt)
endif()

# After referencing, directly use target_link_libraries to link the target of AimRT
target_link_libraries(
  my_module
  PUBLIC aimrt::interface::aimrt_module_cpp_interface)

Referencing via find_package After Installation

Refer to Build from Source to run the build.sh script for building. During the build, you can modify CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX to specify the installation directory. After completing the installation, follow the steps below to complete the reference:

  • If it is not installed in the system path, you need to set CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH in your project’s CMake to the AimRT installation directory, for example:

  list(APPEND CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH "/path/to/aimrt/install")

  • You need to find the required dependencies in your project’s CMake. You can directly use the .cmake scripts provided with the AimRT installation. Refer to the following code:

  list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH /path/to/aimrt/install/cmake)
  include(GetFmt)
  include(GetLibUnifex)
  include(GetProtobuf)
  include(GetYamlCpp)
  include(GetJsonCpp)
  include(GetTBB)
  include(GetAsio)

  • If ROS-related features were included when compiling AimRT, you also need to reference some ROS packages introduced during AimRT installation, for example:

  find_package(ros2_plugin_proto REQUIRED)

  • Finally, use find_package to locate aimrt:

  find_package(aimrt REQUIRED)

Complete example CMake code:

list(APPEND CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH "/path/to/aimrt/install")
list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH "/path/to/aimrt/install/cmake")

include(GetFmt)
include(GetLibUnifex)
include(GetProtobuf)
include(GetYamlCpp)
include(GetJsonCpp)
include(GetTBB)
include(GetAsio)

find_package(ros2_plugin_proto REQUIRED)
find_package(aimrt REQUIRED)

# 引入后直接使用target_link_libraries链接aimrt的target
target_link_libraries(
  my_module
  PUBLIC aimrt::interface::aimrt_module_cpp_interface)