Building and Installing

This section describes how to build and install the Connext Python API.

Requirements

• Linux®, macOS®, or Windows® (with Visual Studio® 2015 or newer)

• Python® 3.6 or newer

• The following Python packages:

  • For all systems: pip install wheel setuptools cmake pybind11==2.9.0

  • Additionally, for Linux systems: pip install patchelf

  • And for mac OS systems: pip install delocate

• A Connext 7.1.0 host and target installation (see the Connext Getting Started Guide for instructions on how to install Connext).

Note

Like any other Connext language API, the Connext Python API interoperates with other Connext versions. The required version above is only to build the Python API. Once built, you can use it to communicate with applications built on other Connext versions.

Simple Installation

1. Clone the repository and submodules, and enter the directory.

$ git clone https://github.com/rticommunity/connextdds-py.git
$ cd connextdds-py

2. Run configure.py script

$ python configure.py [options...] <platform>

For example:

$ python configure.py --nddshome /opt/rti_connext_dds-7.1.0 --jobs 4 x64Linux4gcc7.3.0

See Advanced Configuration below for more options.

3. Build and install.

$ pip install .

This command will compile C++ code and install the Python package. Depending on your machine, it make take a while to complete. You can increase the number of parallel jobs for the compilation (--jobs option used above).

4. The package is now installed and ready to use; you can import the module rti.connextdds and others. See Hello World, or enter the following on the python interpreter:

   $ python
   >>> import rti.connextdds as dds
   >>> participant = dds.DomainParticipant(100)
   >>> participant.domain_id
   100
   

Redistributable Wheel Build

In addition to installing the API on your machine, you can build a wheel file that you can use to install the API on other machines. The wheel works on machines with the same processor and OS, and the same major Python version. For example, you can build a wheel on a x64 Linux machine with Python 3.10 and then install it on other x64 Linux machines with Python 3.10.

1. Clone the repository and submodules, and enter the directory.

$ git clone https://github.com/rticommunity/connextdds-py.git
$ cd connextdds-py

2. Run configure.py script

$ python configure.py [options...] <platform>

3. Build the wheel.

$ pip wheel .

4. Install the wheel on your machine or other machines:

$ pip install rti.connext-<version>-<platform>.whl

Advanced Configuration

The configure.py takes additional options.

$ python configure.py [options...] platform

Where “platform” specifies the RTI target architecture/platform string and the options are specified in the following table.

Short Option	Long Option	Description
-n NDDSHOME	–nddshome NDDSHOME	NDDSHOME directory. Defaults to NDDSHOME environment variable.
-j JOBS	–jobs JOBS	Number of concurrent build jobs/processes
-t	–tcp	Add the TCP transport plugin
-m	–monitoring	Add the RTI Monitoring plugin
-s	–secure	Add the RTI Security Plugins + openssl libraries
-p PLUGIN	–plugin PLUGIN	Add a user-defined plugin. This option can be specified multiple times
-o OPENSSL	–openssl OPENSSL	Location of openssl libraries (defaults to platform library location under NDDSHOME)
-r DIR	–python-root DIR	Root directory of Python (prefers 3.x over 2.x if both are under root)
-c FILE	–cmake-toolchain FILE	CMake toolchain file to use when cross compiling
-d	–debug	Use debug libraries and build debug modules for connext-py
-h	–help	Show help message and exit

Uninstalling

To uninstall the package, run the following command:

$ pip uninstall rti.connext -y