Installation

Next Tutorial: Nodes and Topics Previous Tutorial: Introduction

Overview

This page contains instructions to install Gazebo Transport on all the support platforms including major Linux distributions, Mac OS X and Windows.

You can find all Gazebo Transport versions at https://gazebosim.org/libs/transport.

Binary Install

Ubuntu

Setup your computer to accept software from packages.osrfoundation.org:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'

Setup keys:

wget https://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Install Gazebo Transport:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libgz-transport<#>-dev

Be sure to replace <#> with a number value, such as 8 or 9, depending on which version you need.

Mac OS X

Gazebo Transport and several of its dependencies can be compiled on OS X with Homebrew using the osrf/simulation tap. Gazebo Transport is straightforward to install on Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) or higher. Installation on older versions requires changing the default standard library and rebuilding dependencies due to the use of c++11. For purposes of this documentation, assuming OS X 10.9 or greater is in use. Here are the instructions:

After installing the Homebrew package manager, which should also prompt you to install the XCode command-line tools add OSRF packages and run the install command:

brew tap osrf/simulation
brew install gz-transport<#>

Be sure to replace <#> with a number value, such as 8 or 9, depending on which version you need.

Windows

Install Conda package management system. Miniconda suffices.

Create if necessary, and activate a Conda environment:

conda create -n gz-ws
conda activate gz-ws

Install:

conda install libgz-transport<#> --channel conda-forge

Be sure to replace <#> with a number value, such as 1 or 2, depending on which version you need.

Source Install

Install Prerequisites

Ubuntu Linux

For compiling the latest version of Gazebo Transport you will need an Ubuntu distribution equal to 24.04 (Noble) or newer.

Make sure you have removed the Ubuntu pre-compiled binaries before installing from source:

sudo apt-get remove libgz-transport.*-dev

Install prerequisites. A clean Ubuntu system will need:

sudo apt-get install git cmake pkg-config python ruby-ronn libprotoc-dev libprotobuf-dev protobuf-compiler uuid-dev libzmq3-dev libgz-msgs11-dev libgz-utils3-cli-dev

macOS

After installing the Homebrew package manager, which should also prompt you to install the XCode command-line tools add OSRF packages and run the command to install dependencies:

brew tap osrf/simulation
brew install --only-dependencies gz-transport<#>

Be sure to replace <#> with a number value, such as 10 or 11, depending on which version you need.

Clone, Configure, and Build

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-transport -b gz-transport<#>

Be sure to replace <#> with a number value, such as 10 or 11, depending on which version you need. From version 12 use gz-transport<#> for lower versions use ign-transport<#>

Configure and build

cd gz-transport
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Optionally, install

sudo make install

Configuration options

Configure Gazebo Transport (choose either method a or b below):

A. Release mode (recommended): This will generate optimized code, but will not have debug symbols. Use this mode if you don't need to use GDB (advanced).

cmake ..

Note: You can use a custom install path to make it easier to switch between source and debian installs:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/$USER/local ..

B. Debug mode: This will generate code with debug symbols. Gazebo Transport will run slower, but you'll be able to use GDB.

cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ..

The output from cmake ../ may generate a number of errors and warnings about missing packages. You must install the missing packages that have errors and re-run cmake ../. Make sure all the build errors are resolved before continuing (they should be there from the earlier step in which you installed prerequisites).

Make note of your install path, which is output from cmake and should look something like:

-- Install path: /home/$USER/local

Build Gazebo Transport:

make -j4

Install Gazebo Transport:

sudo make install

If you decide to install gazebo in a local directory you'll need to modify your LD_LIBRARY_PATH:

echo "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<install_path>/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" >> ~/.bashrc

Build python bindings separately from main library

If you want to build Python bindings separately from the main gz-transport library (for example if you want to build Python bindings for multiple versions of Python), you can invoke cmake on the python folder instead of the root folder. Specify the path to the python executable with which you wish to build bindings in the Python3_EXECUTABLE cmake variable. Specify the install path for the bindings in the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX variable, and be sure to set your PYTHONPATH accordingly after install.

cd sdformat
mkdir build_python3
cd build_python3
cmake ../python \
    -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=/usr/local/bin/python3.12 \
    -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<prefix>

See the homebrew sdformat15 formula for an example of building bindings for multiple versions of Python.

Uninstalling Source-based Install

If you need to uninstall Gazebo Transport or switch back to a debian-based install when you currently have installed the library from source, navigate to your source code directory's build folders and run make uninstall:

cd /tmp/gz-transport/build
sudo make uninstall

Windows

Prerequisites

First, follow the source installation tutorial until step 5 included for installing Conda, Visual Studio, CMake, etc., prerequisites, and creating a Conda environment.

Navigate to condabin if necessary to use the conda command (i.e., if Conda is not in your PATH environment variable. You can find the location of condabin in Anaconda Prompt, where conda).

Activate the Conda environment:

conda activate gz-ws

Install prerequisites:

conda install zeromq cppzmq --channel conda-forge

Install Gazebo dependencies:

You can view available versions and their dependencies:

conda search libgz-transport* --channel conda-forge --info

Install dependencies, replacing <#> with the desired versions:

conda install libgz-cmake<#> libgz-msgs<#> libgz-tools<#> --channel conda-forge

Building from Source

1. Navigate to where you would like to build the library, and clone the repository.

   # Optionally, append `-b gz-transport#` (replace # with a number) to check out a specific version.
   From version 12 use `gz-transport<#>` for lower versions use `ign-transport<#>`
   git clone https://github.com/gazebosim/gz-transport.git

2. Configure and build

   cd gz-transport
   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake .. -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF  # Optionally, -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=path\to\install
   cmake --build . --config Release

3. Optionally, install. You will likely need to run a terminal with admin privileges for this call to succeed.

   cmake --install . --config Release

4. Optionally, build the examples

   If you installed to a custom location, you may need to specify -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH, pointing to the directory containing the file gz-transport<#>-config.cmake. That file is installed to the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX, for example, path\to\install\gz-transport<#>\lib\cmake\gz-transport<#>.

   cd gz-transport\example
   mkdir build
   cd build
   cmake ..  # Optionally, -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=path\to\cmake\config
   cmake --build . --config Release

   Try an example (in the Release directory)

   responser

   In another terminal, run

   requester

Documentation

Visit the documentation page.

Build documentation

cd build
make doc

View the documentation by running the following command from the build directory.

firefox doxygen/html/index.html

Testing

Tests can be run by building the test target. From your build directory you can run:

make test

Note: Python tests require running sudo make install before running make test.