installation.rst

Build / installation

Plain cmake

To build this library standalone so that you can build you own applications using this library, follow the usual cmake procedure:

$ cd <clone of this repository>
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
$ sudo make install

This will install the library into your system so that it can be used by other cmake projects directly.

Inside a ROS / ROS 2 workspace

The ur_client_library is available in all maintained ROS distribution and can be installed using

$ sudo apt install ros-<distro>-ur-client-library

Unless you explicitly want to contribute to this library we recommend using the binary installation instead of building from source as explained below.

ROS noetic

If you want to build this library inside a ROS workspace, e.g. because you want to build the Universal Robots ROS driver from source, you cannot use catkin_make directly, as this library is not a catkin package. Instead, you will have to use catkin_make_isolated or catkin build to build your workspace.

ROS 2

If you want to build this library inside a ROS 2 workspace, e.g. because you want to build the Universal Robots ROS2 driver from source, simply clone this project into your workspace and build your workspace as usual.

Use this library in other projects

When you want to use this library in other cmake projects, make sure to

• Add find_package(ur_client_library REQUIRED) to your CMakeLists.txt
• add ur_client_library::urcl to the list of target_link_libraries(...) commands inside your CMakeLists.txt file

As a minimal example, take the following “project”:

/*main.cpp*/

#include <iostream>
#include <ur_client_library/ur/dashboard_client.h>

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
  urcl::DashboardClient my_client("192.168.56.101");
  bool connected = my_client.connect();
  if (connected)
  {
    std::string answer = my_client.sendAndReceive("PolyscopeVersion\n");
    std::cout << answer << std::endl;
    my_client.disconnect();
  }
  return 0;
}

# CMakeLists.txt

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0.2)
project(minimal_example)

find_package(ur_client_library REQUIRED)
add_executable(db_client main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(db_client ur_client_library::urcl)