Distro	Build dev	Release
ROS 2 Humble (u22.04)
ROS 2 Jazzy (u24.04)
ROS 2 Kilted (u24.04)
ROS 2 Lyrical (u26.04)
ROS 2 Rolling (u26.04)

Package	ROS 2 Humble (u22.04)	ROS 2 Jazzy (u24.04)	ROS 2 Kilted (u24.04)	ROS 2 Lyrical (u26.04)	ROS 2 Rolling (u26.04)
gtsam2mrpt_serial

Each cell stacks the badges for that ROS 2 distro, in this order (when available):

• Ubuntu (amd64)
• Ubuntu (arm64)
• RHEL (x86_64) – not available for Humble, since mrpt3 cannot be built there.
• Fedora (x86_64) – only available since ROS 2 Lyrical.

gtsam2mrpt_serial

A C++ library providing a bidirectional serialization bridge between GTSAM and mrpt-serialization.

Serialize and deserialize GTSAM data structures — including NonlinearFactorGraph and Values — to and from any mrpt I/O stream (files, sockets, pipes) with optional transparent compression.

Features

• Fast — benchmarks show roughly half the wall-clock time of GTSAM’s native Boost binary serialization for mid-sized graphs (see Performance).
• Portable — the binary format is stable across machine architectures, endianness, word sizes, and operating systems, unlike Boost serialization.
• Versioned — a version tag is embedded in every serialized object so that future library releases can read files produced by older ones.
• Compressed — transparent .gz and .zstd compression is available via mrpt::io::CCompressedOutputStream at no extra cost to the caller.
• Stream-agnostic — works with any stream in mrpt-io: local files, TCP sockets, named pipes, in-memory buffers, and more.

Requirements

• C++17 or newer (required by MRPT).
• MRPT ≥ 3.0 (modules mrpt_serialization, mrpt_io, mrpt_math, mrpt_poses): install the ROS 2 packages (sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-mrpt-io ros-$ROS_DISTRO-mrpt-poses), or follow the MRPT install guide.
• GTSAM: 4.2 (Boost-based) and ≥ 4.3 (Boost-free) are both supported. Install the ROS 2 package (sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-gtsam), build from source, or use the official PPA.

Supported types

Usage

Include the single header and use the << / >> stream operators:

#include <gtsam2mrpt_serial/serialize.h>
#include <mrpt/io/CCompressedOutputStream.h>
#include <mrpt/serialization/CArchive.h>

using namespace gtsam2mrpt_serial;

// --- Serialize ---
gtsam::NonlinearFactorGraph graph = /* ... */;
gtsam::Values               initial = /* ... */;

mrpt::io::CCompressedOutputStream f("graph.mrpt.zstd");
auto arch = mrpt::serialization::archiveFrom(f);
arch << graph << initial;

// --- Deserialize ---
mrpt::io::CCompressedInputStream f2("graph.mrpt.zstd");
auto arch2 = mrpt::serialization::archiveFrom(f2);

gtsam::NonlinearFactorGraph graph2;
gtsam::Values               initial2;
arch2 >> graph2 >> initial2;

For a more complete example, see tests/main.cpp.

Installation

From ROS 2 packages (recommended)

sudo apt install ros-$ROS_DISTRO-gtsam2mrpt-serial

From source

mkdir -p ~/ros2_ws/src && cd ~/ros2_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/MRPT/gtsam2mrpt_serial.git
cd ~/ros2_ws
colcon build --packages-select gtsam2mrpt_serial

Performance

Profiling against GTSAM’s native Boost binary serialization on an Intel Core i7-6700HQ @ 2.60 GHz (Ubuntu 20.04, Boost 1.71, MRPT 2.4.4) shows approximately 2× faster serialization and deserialization for mid-sized factor graphs. The time axis below is logarithmic.

File truncated at 100 lines see the full file

Changelog for package gtsam2mrpt_serial

0.4.0 (2026-09-25)

• Match m-estimators by exact type when serializing
• ci: build and test on all ROS 2 distros with their own GTSAM version
• Fix noise model serialization bugs and add unit tests
• Add SPDX license identifiers to source headers
• Unify license as BSD-3-Clause; update README for MRPT 3 and fix broken links
• Fix -Wshadow warnings in factor serialization macros
• Contributors: Jose Luis Blanco-Claraco

0.3.0 (2026-09-23)

• Merge pull request #1 from MRPT/feat/mrpt3 Port to MRPT 3.x
• ci: adapt for mrpt3
• add formatter script
• docs: add ROS 2 Lyrical badge row, update Rolling to Ubuntu 26.04 (resolute)
• Contributors: Jose Luis Blanco-Claraco

0.2.0 (2026-02-21)

• Modernize and fix style
• fix build in new gtsam
• Add devcontainer for Rolling
• Add build farm badges
• Update README.md
• clarify license
• build depend: fix missing ones
• reorganize files for proper finding headers downstream
• Update as a colcon package
• fix newer gtsam version API
• Add .so version numbers
• tighter tests
• more correct cmake export
• Update README.md
• doc images
• more tests and profiling
• refactor unit tests
• First working version (requires mod gtsam)
• Progress with noise models
• Update README.md
• Delete azure-pipelines.yml
• Update README.md
• Serialization of basic values
• Update cmake.yml
• Create cmake.yml
• depends
• initial commit with basic structure
• Initial commit
• Contributors: Jose Luis Blanco-Claraco