ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler

Post by Morgan Cormier
Hi,
http://www.ros.org/wiki/mingw_cross/Tutorials/cross_platform_qt_ros
I experience some problems during the installation. When i compile mingw_cross (roscd mingw_cross;make) the compilation stop after downloading libpng, it says that the checksum is wrong.
I installed it using : http://mingw-cross-env.nongnu.org/ and could finally do all the steps in the tutorial.
/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib/libboost_signals-mt.a: member /opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib/libboost_signals-mt.a(trackable.o) in archive is not an object
Do you know how to solve this problem?
Thank you,

Just a quick reply before I crash for the night - will look at it
again tomorrow.

libpng checksum : we found a couple of broken link problems like this
a couple of weeks ago, but that was because we were using mingw_2.16
which was a bit dated. I upgraded the links in eros to actually use
that tarball you downloaded (version 2.18), so can you make sure you
reinstall, or at least svn update your eros again? We've fixed one or
two other bugs in the meantime as well that you might need.

The latter problem is a bit harder - I haven't come across that one
before. Some links that might be relevant:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=4036&context=SSCQ43Z&uid=swg21430166&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8&lang=en

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/805555/ld-linker-question-the-whole-archive-option

I noticed that rosbuild/public.cmake is setting this flag
(--whole-archive) when building statics. I assume that its because
there's ros code that may fail without the setting as illustrated in
the second link above. I'll do some testing tomorrow.

Thanks for the feedback and apologies for finding yourself in the
position of being a very early tester!

Regards,
Daniel Stonier.

Post by Morgan Cormier
Morgan Cormier
Coroware Technologies
_______________________________________________
ros-users mailing list
https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users

Morgan Cormier

2011-03-12 00:44:55 UTC

Hi,

Thanks for this reply,

I think the second error I had is because mingw didn't finish to compile because of the checksum error in libpng. I compiled it during the night, I didn't see the result since my computer shut down automatically, but since I could do the following step I though it was installed.

I tried to do as you said, I did an svn update of eros and so had the lasest version, and tried to compile again mingw_cross but I had the same problem.
Is the "svn co link" command enough or do I have to use the command "rosinstall /opt/ros https://code.ros.org/gf/project/eros/scmsvn/?action=browse&path=%2F*checkout*%2Ftrunk%2Feros_diamondback.rosinstall" ?

Thank you for your help,

Morgan Cormer

Daniel Stonier

2011-03-13 08:58:12 UTC

Ok, my apologies. I must have had an old tarball lying around and
missed the libpng problem, but I'm now seeing the same thing. It's
also come up on mingw cross' mailing list. Problem is due to a broken
link in libpng having been upgraded recently and they moved their old
tarballs to a different directory.

I've patched mingw_cross in eros to handle this for now.

- Update eros
- Clear out your /opt/mingw and redo mingw_cross, OR
- Simply copy mingw_cross/patches/libpng.mk to /opt/mingw/src
followed by 'cd /opt/mingw; make gcc boost qt'

I don't think I like the fact that their stable branch is prone to
broken links though, so I sent them an email about how we can resolve
this more practically. Another option I might try if more users start
coming on board is to make some binary tarballs of mingw_cross for ros
of the more popular platforms. Out of interest, what are you using?

Anyway, let me know how that goes and especially how boost fares once
you are done.

Cheers,
Daniel.

Hi Again,
[download] libpng
Wrong checksum of package libpng!
------------------------------------------------------------
=> `-'
Resolving ftp.simplesystems.org... 65.66.246.92
Connecting to ftp.simplesystems.org|65.66.246.92|:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done. ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done. ==> CWD (1) /pub/libpng/png/src ... done.
==> SIZE libpng-1.4.4.tar.bz2 ... done.
==> PASV ... done. ==> RETR libpng-1.4.4.tar.bz2 ...
No such file `libpng-1.4.4.tar.bz2'.
------------------------------------------------------------
[log] /opt/mingw/log/libpng-download
make[1]: *** [/opt/mingw/usr/installed/libpng] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/opt/mingw'
I am sure that we will find a solution to this problem,
Thank you so much for your help,
Morgan Cormier
________________________________________
Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2011 1:35 AM
To: Morgan Cormier
Subject: Re: [ros-users] ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler

Post by Morgan Cormier
Hi,
Thanks for this reply,
I think the second error I had is because mingw didn't finish to compile because of the checksum error in libpng. I compiled it during the night, I didn't see the result since my computer shut down automatically, but since I could do the following step I though it was installed.

I went back to the version from 2 weeks ago and checked - came out
with the same libpng error which led me to think you have an old
version of eros. You can check by looking at mingw's makefile.
$ roscd mingw_cross
$ vim Makefile
If it's downloading 2.16, you've got an old version. You should be seeing 2.18.

Post by Morgan Cormier
I tried to do as you said, I did an svn update of eros and so had the lasest version, and tried to compile again mingw_cross but I had the same problem.
Is the "svn co link" command enough

If you mean by link, https://code.ros.org/svn/eros/trunk, then that
has probably just checked out another eros inside eros under a dir
$ roscd eros
$ svn update

Post by Morgan Cormier
or do I have to use the command "rosinstall /opt/ros https://code.ros.org/gf/project/eros/scmsvn/?action=browse&path=%2F*checkout*%2Ftrunk%2Feros_diamondback.rosinstall" ?

$ rosinstall /opt/ros
"https://code.ros.org/gf/project/eros/scmsvn/?action=browse&path=%2F*checkout*%2Ftrunk%2Feros_diamondback.rosinstall"
on an existing installation in /opt/ros will simply update all your
repos in /opt/ros. So that should work too. As I said before, check
mingw's Makefile to be sure.
With regards to the boost problem, I just tried a simple boost signals
program and it linked without a problem. I've attached that package
with this. Is there any chance you could simplify your package to a
standalone test that reproduces the problem and send it to me? I can'
try and reproduce here on my machine.
Cheers,
Daniel.

Post by Morgan Cormier
Thank you for your help,
Morgan Cormer

--
Phone : +82-10-5400-3296 (010-5400-3296)
Home: http://snorriheim.dnsdojo.com/
Yujin Robot: http://www.yujinrobot.com/
Embedded Ros : http://www.ros.org/wiki/eros
Embedded Control Libraries: http://snorriheim.dnsdojo.com/redmine/wiki/ecl

Daniel Stonier

2011-03-15 04:48:14 UTC

Hi Morgan,

Sending this back to ros-users as it seems we got sidetracked onto
private replies and it would be good to have this out there in the
wild for others to pick up on. With this in mind, a quick summary of
the problems: there was a broken package link in mingw cross (libpng)
that is patched now and getting fixed upstream. We're also looking for
more stability upstream at the moment too. The other problems turned
out to be a non-event once Morgan got a better handle on how ros
works.

Morgan, keep me updated (especially if you come across broken elements
in mingw_cross) and thanks for the testing. We haven't done much
beyond testing the initial framework yet, so just the basic packages
are ported which is enough to pass around messages for debugging. I'll
have to look at porting things like tf, actionlib and nodelet to
windows soon.

Cheers,
Daniel.

$ rostoolchain clear
$ rosprotect --unprotect --comms
thank you so much for all the help you provided, that was really helpful for me who is still inexperienced( a student) and not a linux/ros expert.
Morgan Cormier
________________________________________
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 10:19 PM
To: Morgan Cormier
Subject: Re: [ros-users] ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler
Ok, I can do it from scratch here without a problem so I think you're
doing something different somewhere in the pipeline (aka 'cmake .').
One thing I found teaching the other guys in my lab is that its really
important to be in the habit to look for errors at the end of every
command, linux talks to you, just have to listen. They often ignore
and just proceed on to the next command without realising it broke
further up the chain. That may or may not help you.
So to find where you're going wrong. It can't find -lros, which
usually means its not at all there. If its a wrong version then it
will babble about that too, but the first thing you should check is to
see if its there. i.e.
$ roscd roscpp/lib
$ ls
You should see a libros.a there. If not, go back and make sure your
toolchain is selected and precompile everything again.
$ rostoolchain clear
$ rosprotect --unprotect --comms
$ rostoolchain select mingw_cross/i686-pc-mingw32
$ rosprotect --pre-clean --comms
$ roscd eros_qt_tutorials
$ make
I also updated the wiki page with some validation checks you can make
along the way to ensure everything is properly prepared. That might
help better understand what is going on under the hood too.
http://www.ros.org/wiki/mingw_cross/Tutorials/cross_platform_qt_ros
Cheers,
Daniel.

Hi Daniel,
/opt/mingw/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-mingw32/4.5.1/../../../../i686-pc-mingw32/bin/ld: cannot find -lros
Do you know how to solve this problem?
Thank you so much for all your help,
Morgan Cormier
________________________________________
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 12:22 AM
To: Morgan Cormier
Subject: Re: [ros-users] ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler
Oh, what are you doing 'cmake .' for? That's the cmake way, but not
the current ros way (might be changing with the next ros version).
First of all, even if doing cmake projects, its a good habit to do
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
All temporary files are then dumped in the build dir, and if you want
to clean it out, you just have to remove the build dir. On the flip
side, if you do 'cmake .', it populates your directory with all sorts
of junk files and makes it hard to clean out later on.
Secondly, with ros, even though it builds via cmake, it uses a
makefile frontend to do so. So in any ros package, you always need to
run 'make' (aka build this package) or 'rosmake' (aka build this
package and its deps). If you don't it won't pull in various
configuration files important to cmake. In this case - because we're
cross compiling it will pull in the cross compiling configuration!
That's what you're missing when you do 'cmake .' and why you get the
error (I've managed to see the same error when doing so here).
So...end result, clear out eros_qt_tutorials, update and try again
$ roscd eros_qt_tutorials
$ cd ..
$ rm -rf eros_qt_tutorials
$ svn update (should see eros_qt_tutorials download again)
$ roscd eros_qt_tutorials
$ make (or rosmake)
Hope this helps,
Daniel.

/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib
/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib
Do you think the boost error can be related to the fact that it doesn't find the qt libs?
/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib/libboost_signals-mt.a: member /opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib/libboost_signals-mt.a(trackable.o) in archive is not an object
As for the plateform I am using, I have ubuntu with an intel board (intel D525).
Thank you so much for your help and please tell me if you can find a solution to my boost problem.
Morgan Cormier
________________________________________
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 3:58 AM
To: Morgan Cormier; User discussions
Subject: Re: [ros-users] ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler
Ok, my apologies. I must have had an old tarball lying around and
missed the libpng problem, but I'm now seeing the same thing. It's
also come up on mingw cross' mailing list. Problem is due to a broken
link in libpng having been upgraded recently and they moved their old
tarballs to a different directory.
I've patched mingw_cross in eros to handle this for now.
- Update eros
- Clear out your /opt/mingw and redo mingw_cross, OR
- Simply copy mingw_cross/patches/libpng.mk to /opt/mingw/src
followed by 'cd /opt/mingw; make gcc boost qt'
I don't think I like the fact that their stable branch is prone to
broken links though, so I sent them an email about how we can resolve
this more practically. Another option I might try if more users start
coming on board is to make some binary tarballs of mingw_cross for ros
of the more popular platforms. Out of interest, what are you using?
Anyway, let me know how that goes and especially how boost fares once
you are done.
Cheers,
Daniel.

If you mean by link, https://code.ros.org/svn/eros/trunk, then that
has probably just checked out another eros inside eros under a dir
$ roscd eros
$ svn update

Post by Morgan Cormier
or do I have to use the command "rosinstall /opt/ros https://code.ros.org/gf/project/eros/scmsvn/?action=browse&path=%2F*checkout*%2Ftrunk%2Feros_diamondback.rosinstall" ?

Post by Morgan Cormier
Thank you for your help,
Morgan Cormer

Daniel Stonier

2011-03-24 00:16:06 UTC

Hi Daniel,
Thank you again for your help with the ros cross compiler, it is working
very well now.
However, I may have a question regarding this cross-compilation. I am doing
an application with ros and qt to run both an Linux and Windows. In this
application I want to use the joystick. The problem is that I have to use
the Os API to use the joystick, so Windows and Linux will be different. If
it was a normal Qt application I would have included into my code "#ifdef
Q_WS_WIN" to check if we compile on Windows or on Linux but here the case is
difference, I compile on Linux to have the Linux and Windows binaries.
Could you please tell me if there is a way with the cross compiler you made
to compile with some Windows specific libraries? If not, do you how to solve
this problem?

Firstly #ifdef's.

I had no problem with Q_OS_WIN32 or Q_WS_WIN...see following code:

*************************************************

#include <iostream>
#include <QtCore/QtGlobal>

int main() {
std::cout << "Hello Dude" << std::endl;
#ifdef Q_OS_WIN32
std::cout << "Hello Win" << std::endl;
#endif
return 0;
}

*************************************************

Maybe you were just missing the header? Perhaps that is something that qmake
does extra that cmake's qt module does not do. Also, if you have a look
inside QtGlobal (which calls qglobal.h), you'll see that the macro is just
dependant on WIN32 being defined, so you could do that just as easily, i.e.

#ifdef WIN32
// windows code
#else
// unix code
#endif

That's the way I usually do cross-platform code, and you dont have to
remember to do it a certain way for a particular library or call a
particular header as the compiler (or maybe it's the c library, can't
remember for sure which) will set that definition for you.

Secondly, what joystick libraries are you depending on? That's usually a
thorny issue for mingw programs - msvc compiled libraries and mingw compiled
libraries are usually incompatible, they store their symbols differently.
There are supposedly ways of getting that too work, but I've tried and is
too much effort too maintain in a stable way (was easier to convince my
company to move to linux!). The base system windows libraries are about the
maximum you can rely on - mingw build environment has compiled their own
versions of these. On top of that, there are the libraries provided by
mingw_cross. If the joystick api you're seeking is in these, you'll be ok,
if not (like if its a downloaded driver)...we have to email again :)

Let me know how it goes.

Regards,
Daniel.

Thank you so much for the help you provided me up until now, especially by

providing this cross-compiler very useful.
Morgan Cormier
________________________________________
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 11:48 PM
To: Morgan Cormier; User discussions
Subject: Re: [ros-users] ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler
Hi Morgan,
Sending this back to ros-users as it seems we got sidetracked onto
private replies and it would be good to have this out there in the
wild for others to pick up on. With this in mind, a quick summary of
the problems: there was a broken package link in mingw cross (libpng)
that is patched now and getting fixed upstream. We're also looking for
more stability upstream at the moment too. The other problems turned
out to be a non-event once Morgan got a better handle on how ros
works.
Morgan, keep me updated (especially if you come across broken elements
in mingw_cross) and thanks for the testing. We haven't done much
beyond testing the initial framework yet, so just the basic packages
are ported which is enough to pass around messages for debugging. I'll
have to look at porting things like tf, actionlib and nodelet to
windows soon.
Cheers,
Daniel.

$ rostoolchain clear
$ rosprotect --unprotect --comms
thank you so much for all the help you provided, that was really helpful

for me who is still inexperienced( a student) and not a linux/ros expert.

Morgan Cormier
________________________________________
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 10:19 PM
To: Morgan Cormier
Subject: Re: [ros-users] ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler
Ok, I can do it from scratch here without a problem so I think you're
doing something different somewhere in the pipeline (aka 'cmake .').
One thing I found teaching the other guys in my lab is that its really
important to be in the habit to look for errors at the end of every
command, linux talks to you, just have to listen. They often ignore
and just proceed on to the next command without realising it broke
further up the chain. That may or may not help you.
So to find where you're going wrong. It can't find -lros, which
usually means its not at all there. If its a wrong version then it
will babble about that too, but the first thing you should check is to
see if its there. i.e.
$ roscd roscpp/lib
$ ls
You should see a libros.a there. If not, go back and make sure your
toolchain is selected and precompile everything again.
$ rostoolchain clear
$ rosprotect --unprotect --comms
$ rostoolchain select mingw_cross/i686-pc-mingw32
$ rosprotect --pre-clean --comms
$ roscd eros_qt_tutorials
$ make
I also updated the wiki page with some validation checks you can make
along the way to ensure everything is properly prepared. That might
help better understand what is going on under the hood too.
http://www.ros.org/wiki/mingw_cross/Tutorials/cross_platform_qt_ros
Cheers,
Daniel.

Hi Daniel,
Thank you so much for you answer, I am still inexperienced, especially

in ROS. I followed everything that is written on the tutorial and what you
said and did it on two computer to make sure but I have the same error on
cannot find -lros

Do you know how to solve this problem?
Thank you so much for all your help,
Morgan Cormier
________________________________________
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 12:22 AM
To: Morgan Cormier
Subject: Re: [ros-users] ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler

As for the boost problem I still have it, even when I try to compile

the eros_qt_tutorials package. When I do a "cmake ." on this package I have

Oh, what are you doing 'cmake .' for? That's the cmake way, but not
the current ros way (might be changing with the next ros version).
First of all, even if doing cmake projects, its a good habit to do
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
All temporary files are then dumped in the build dir, and if you want
to clean it out, you just have to remove the build dir. On the flip
side, if you do 'cmake .', it populates your directory with all sorts
of junk files and makes it hard to clean out later on.
Secondly, with ros, even though it builds via cmake, it uses a
makefile frontend to do so. So in any ros package, you always need to
run 'make' (aka build this package) or 'rosmake' (aka build this
package and its deps). If you don't it won't pull in various
configuration files important to cmake. In this case - because we're
cross compiling it will pull in the cross compiling configuration!
That's what you're missing when you do 'cmake .' and why you get the
error (I've managed to see the same error when doing so here).
So...end result, clear out eros_qt_tutorials, update and try again
$ roscd eros_qt_tutorials
$ cd ..
$ rm -rf eros_qt_tutorials
$ svn update (should see eros_qt_tutorials download

again)

$ roscd eros_qt_tutorials
$ make (or rosmake)
Hope this helps,
Daniel.

/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib
/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib
Do you think the boost error can be related to the fact that it doesn't

find the qt libs?

/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib/libboost_signals-mt.a: member

/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib/libboost_signals-mt.a(trackable.o) in
archive is not an object

As for the plateform I am using, I have ubuntu with an intel board

(intel D525).

Thank you so much for your help and please tell me if you can find a

solution to my boost problem.

Morgan Cormier
________________________________________
Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2011 3:58 AM
To: Morgan Cormier; User discussions
Subject: Re: [ros-users] ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler
Ok, my apologies. I must have had an old tarball lying around and
missed the libpng problem, but I'm now seeing the same thing. It's
also come up on mingw cross' mailing list. Problem is due to a broken
link in libpng having been upgraded recently and they moved their old
tarballs to a different directory.
I've patched mingw_cross in eros to handle this for now.
- Update eros
- Clear out your /opt/mingw and redo mingw_cross, OR
- Simply copy mingw_cross/patches/libpng.mk to /opt/mingw/src
followed by 'cd /opt/mingw; make gcc boost qt'
I don't think I like the fact that their stable branch is prone to
broken links though, so I sent them an email about how we can resolve
this more practically. Another option I might try if more users start
coming on board is to make some binary tarballs of mingw_cross for ros
of the more popular platforms. Out of interest, what are you using?
Anyway, let me know how that goes and especially how boost fares once
you are done.
Cheers,
Daniel.

Hi Again,
Just to tell you that even after doing a svn update in the eros folder

and checking that it really downloads the 2.18 version, there is still the

[download] libpng
Wrong checksum of package libpng!
------------------------------------------------------------
=> `-'
Resolving ftp.simplesystems.org... 65.66.246.92
Connecting to ftp.simplesystems.org|65.66.246.92|:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done. ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done. ==> CWD (1) /pub/libpng/png/src ... done.
==> SIZE libpng-1.4.4.tar.bz2 ... done.
==> PASV ... done. ==> RETR libpng-1.4.4.tar.bz2 ...
No such file `libpng-1.4.4.tar.bz2'.
------------------------------------------------------------
[log] /opt/mingw/log/libpng-download
make[1]: *** [/opt/mingw/usr/installed/libpng] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/opt/mingw'
I am sure that we will find a solution to this problem,
Thank you so much for your help,
Morgan Cormier
________________________________________
Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2011 1:35 AM
To: Morgan Cormier
Subject: Re: [ros-users] ROS for Windows via the mingw cross compiler

Post by Morgan Cormier
Hi,
Thanks for this reply,
I think the second error I had is because mingw didn't finish to

compile because of the checksum error in libpng. I compiled it during the
night, I didn't see the result since my computer shut down automatically,
but since I could do the following step I though it was installed.

seeing 2.18.

Post by Morgan Cormier
I tried to do as you said, I did an svn update of eros and so had the

lasest version, and tried to compile again mingw_cross but I had the same
problem.

Post by Morgan Cormier
Is the "svn co link" command enough

If you mean by link, https://code.ros.org/svn/eros/trunk, then that
has probably just checked out another eros inside eros under a dir
$ roscd eros
$ svn update

Post by Morgan Cormier
or do I have to use the command "rosinstall /opt/ros

https://code.ros.org/gf/project/eros/scmsvn/?action=browse&path=%2F*checkout*%2Ftrunk%2Feros_diamondback.rosinstall"
?

$ rosinstall /opt/ros
"

https://code.ros.org/gf/project/eros/scmsvn/?action=browse&path=%2F*checkout*%2Ftrunk%2Feros_diamondback.rosinstall
"

on an existing installation in /opt/ros will simply update all your
repos in /opt/ros. So that should work too. As I said before, check
mingw's Makefile to be sure.
With regards to the boost problem, I just tried a simple boost signals
program and it linked without a problem. I've attached that package
with this. Is there any chance you could simplify your package to a
standalone test that reproduces the problem and send it to me? I can'
try and reproduce here on my machine.
Cheers,
Daniel.

Post by Morgan Cormier
Thank you for your help,
Morgan Cormer

Post by Morgan Cormier
Hi,
I am interested in doing a Qt interface with ROS and found this

http://www.ros.org/wiki/mingw_cross/Tutorials/cross_platform_qt_ros

Post by Morgan Cormier
I experience some problems during the installation. When i compile

mingw_cross (roscd mingw_cross;make) the compilation stop after downloading
libpng, it says that the checksum is wrong.

Post by Morgan Cormier
I installed it using : http://mingw-cross-env.nongnu.org/ and

could finally do all the steps in the tutorial.

Post by Morgan Cormier
Another problem occured at this point, I couldn't compile because
/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib/libboost_signals-mt.a: member

/opt/mingw/usr/i686-pc-mingw32/lib/libboost_signals-mt.a(trackable.o) in
archive is not an object

Post by Morgan Cormier
Do you know how to solve this problem?
Thank you,

Just a quick reply before I crash for the night - will look at it
again tomorrow.
libpng checksum : we found a couple of broken link problems like

this

Post by Daniel Stonier
a couple of weeks ago, but that was because we were using mingw_2.16
which was a bit dated. I upgraded the links in eros to actually use
that tarball you downloaded (version 2.18), so can you make sure you
reinstall, or at least svn update your eros again? We've fixed one