.. _section-prepare-development-environment:

Prepare Your Development Environment
====================================

This section describes how to set up your development environment
for |me| applications, such as the required environment variables, 
compilers, compiler definitions, and libraries.

Set environment variables
-------------------------

The ``RTIMEHOME`` environment variable must be set to the installation directory path 
for |rti_me|. If you installed |rti_core| with default settings, |rti_me| will be here:
``<path_to_connext_dds_installation>/rti_connext_dds-<version>/rti_connext_micro-<version>``. 
If you copied |rti_me| to another place, set ``RTIMEHOME`` to point to that location.

Add required preprocessor flags
-------------------------------

All |me| applications require the following preprocessor defines:

.. code-block:: none

  -DRTI_PSL=1
  -IRTIMEHOME/include
  -IRTIMEHOME/include/rti_me
  -IRTIMEHOME/include/rti_me/rti_me_psl

Add the following preprocessor defines, according to your platform and 
compiler:

Using QCC:

.. code-block::

    -DOSAPI_CC_DEF_H=osapi/osapi_cc_qcc.h
    -DRTI_QNX

Link applications and libraries
-------------------------------

Add the library path for both the PIL and PSL to the linker's search path:

* ``RTIMEHOME/lib/<arch>/`` (PIL)
* ``RTIMEHOME/lib/<arch>-<PSL>/`` (PSL)

.. note:: 
  
  When executing executables that are linked with the |me| shared libraries, 
  you must add the path to the PIL architecture directory to the 
  runtime linker's search path.

To link a C application, the libraries are required in the following order:

* ``RTIMEHOME/lib/<arch>/``

 1. ``rti_me`` (always required)

* ``RTIMEHOME/lib/<arch>-<PSL>/``

  2. ``rti_me_psl`` (when building with a Platform Independent Library)

  3. ``rti_me_netiozcopy`` (when building with the Zero Copy v2 transport)