realtime_tools

Contains a set of tools that can be used from a hard realtime thread, without breaking the realtime behavior.

Some documentation can be found at docs.ros.org.

Contributing

As an open-source project, we welcome each contributor, regardless of their background and experience. Pick a PR and review it, or create your own! If you are new to the project, please read the contributing guide for more information on how to get started. We are happy to help you with your first contribution.

Build status

ROS2 Distro | Branch | Build status | Documentation | Package Build :———: | :—-: | :———-: | :———–: | :—————: Rolling | master |

| API | Kilted | master | see above
| API | Jazzy | jazzy |

| API | Humble | humble |

| API |

Acknowledgements

The project has received major contributions from companies and institutions listed on control.ros.org

Changelog for package realtime_tools

2.13.0 (2025-04-06)

• Fix realtime publisher race condition upon initialization (backport #309) (#310)
• [RTPublisher] use NON_POLLING as default for the realtime pubisher (backport #280) (#281)
• Update the docstring for realtime_publisher.hpp (backport #287) (#288)
• Contributors: mergify[bot], Julia Jia

2.12.0 (2025-03-01)

• CI downstream build (backport #214) (#283)
• Bump version of pre-commit hooks (backport #276) (#277)
• Install boost on jazzy as well (backport #273) (#274)
• Use ABI workflow from ros2_control_ci (backport #264) (#271)
• Add Lock-free Queue (backport #253) (#269)
• Improve has_realtime_kernel method (backport #260) (#267)
• Branch for jazzy (backport #263) (#265)
• Contributors: mergify[bot]

2.11.0 (2025-01-29)

• Use humble branch of control_toolbox repo (backport #258) (#259)
• Avoid to include windows.h in realtime_helpers.hpp (backport #255) (#256)
• Bump version of pre-commit hooks (backport #251) (#252)
• Fix ref for scheduled build (backport #248) (#249)
• Add realtime priority inheritance mutexes (backport #197) (#246)
• First step towards modernizing the rt publisher (backport #210) (#233)
• Remove wrong comments (backport #240) (#242)
• Update filenames also for best_effort (#238)
• Contributors: Christoph Fröhlich, mergify[bot]

2.10.0 (2024-12-14)

• sleep after starting thread to fix flaky tests (backport #235) (#237)
• Fix the badges in the readme (backport #234) (#236)
• Remove duplicate wf (backport #230) (#231)
• Adapt API style of lock_memory to match the one of the other functions (backport #209) (#229)
• [Humble] Move the header files to [.hpp]{.title-ref} extension (#206) - No deprecation notice (#225)
• Add support to parse multiple cores for setting CPU affinity (backport #208) (#223)
• remove unused state_ field (backport #215) (#218)
• Changes after branching humble (backport #217) (#224)
• Add downstream build CI job (backport #201) (#222)
• Use windows CI build (backport #204) (#221)
• Add job for clang build (backport #207) (#220)
• Bump version of pre-commit hooks (backport #213) (#219)
• Contributors: Sai Kishor Kothakota, Lennart Nachtigall, Christoph Fröhlich

2.9.0 (2024-12-03)

• Overloading the set_thread_affinity method for Windows compatibility (#193)
• Remove iron workflows and update readme (#184)
• Add method to get the current callback time and period (#192)
• Use pthread_setaffinity_np for setting affinity rather than sched_setaffinity (#190)
• Add the same compile flags as with ros2_controllers and fix errors (#185)
• Contributors: Christoph Fröhlich, Gilmar Correia, Sai Kishor Kothakota

2.8.1 (2024-11-05)

• Fix libcap-dev dependency (#189) Update libcap-dev dependency
• Contributors: Sai Kishor Kothakota

2.8.0 (2024-11-04)

• Add methods to set the thread affinity (#186)
• Fix pre-commit of #187 (#188)
• Removing thread_priority.hpp warning for Windows Systems (#187)
• Fix build error with clang (#183)
• Bump version of pre-commit hooks (#182)
• [AsyncFunctionHandler] return execution time in nanoseconds (#181)
• Rename thread_priority to realtime_helpers header (#178)
• Include <functional> in realtime_box_best_effort (#173)
• Bump version of pre-commit hooks (#171)
• Add fixes to the code to work for the windows systems (#180)
• Update thread_priority.cpp (#170)
• Add a helper method to lock the pages of memory in the RAM (#175)
• Contributors: Christoph Fröhlich, Felix Exner (fexner), Gilmar Correia, Luca Della Vedova, Sai Kishor Kothakota, github-actions[bot]

2.7.0 (2024-10-29)

• [AsyncFunctionHandler] Add exception handling (#172)
• Bump version of pre-commit hooks (#169)
• Contributors: Sai Kishor Kothakota, github-actions[bot]

2.6.0 (2024-08-14)

• Add Async Function Handler (#168)
• Bump version of pre-commit hooks (#167)
• [CI] Add jazzy :rocket: (#165)
• [CI] Specify runner/container images (#163)
• Add custom rosdoc2 config (#161)
• Added a new implementation of the RealtimeBox with added best effort behaviour (#139)
• [CI] Code coverage and pre-commit (#154)
• [CI] Use reusable workflows and matrix strategy (#151)
• Bump ros-tooling/action-ros-ci from 0.3.5 to 0.3.6 (#148)
• Fix RHEL workflows (#144)
• update unlock method to also include the part of the NON_POLLING (#142)
• Bump actions/upload-artifact from 4.1.0 to 4.2.0 (#143)
• [CI] Add debian workflows (#145)
• Test fix: initialize the global context to avoid runtime_error upon destruction (#128)
• Contributors: Christoph Fröhlich, Felix Exner (fexner), Lennart Nachtigall, Sai Kishor Kothakota, dependabot[bot], github-actions[bot]

2.5.0 (2023-01-28)

• Fix overriding of install (#105)
• Add missing test dependency on ament_cmake_gmock (#94)
• Contributors: Bence Magyar, Denis Štogl, Scott K Logan, Tyler Weaver

2.4.0 (2022-11-19)

• bug fix for RealtimePublisher with NON_POLLING (#85)
• ci: :construction_worker: update rhel container (#92)
• Make [thread_priority]{.title-ref} a shared library (#91)
• Contributors: Andy Zelenak, Jaron Lundwall, Yoav Fekete, Denis Štogl

2.3.0 (2022-08-26)

• Fix source-based branch names (#90)
• Fix formatting (#89)
• fix cpplint errors
• Add a library to set thread priority
• Add CI setup as for ros2_control repository.
• Contributors: Andy Zelenak, Bence Magyar, Denis Štogl

2.2.0 (2021-11-03)

• Adding new reset() function for Issue-247.
• Contributors: bailaC

2.1.1 (2021-03-21)

• Fix deprecation warnings when constructing rclcpp::Duration Since https://github.com/ros2/rclcpp/pull/1432 (upcoming in Galactic), we should not initialize with a single integer as the units are ambiguous.
• fix the mis-type error.
• Fix uninitialized variable
• Contributors: Jacob Perron, Victor Lopez, seanyen

2.1.0 (2020-07-03)

• fix msbuild warning
• address linter failures
• enable linters
• avoid deprecations
• Realtime server goal thread handle safety + additional warning fixes (#2) (#57) * Made code thread safe, fixed warnings with repeated aborts/success/cancels Fixed -reorder warning Early return
  • removed atomic
  • removed unneeded header
• use template instead
• use std::atomic instead of volatile
• Contributors: Karsten Knese, Yutaka Kondo, ddengster

2.0.0 (2019-09-09)

• Add test_depend ament_cmake_gmock
• Update CI for dashing
• Add sloretz as another author
• Typename and typos in RTPublisher
• Shorter type names
• Port RealtimeServerGoalHandle to ROS 2
• Port RealtimePublisher to ROS 2 Use test_msgs instead of std_msgs
• Box and buffer work in ROS 2 unchanged
• Port RealtimeClock to ROS 2
• Remove actionlib definitions
• Contributors: Shane Loretz

1.14.0 (2019-07-22)

• Undo action typedef changes
• Remove boost
• Clean up includes in [realtime_tools]{.title-ref} namespace
• Switch to gmock
• Remove TARGET check on tests
• Add unit test for RealtimeServerGoalHandle, RealtimePublisher, RealtimeClock, RealtimeBuffer, RealtimeBox
• Fix race where first message won't get published
• Clean up dependencies and package.xml
• Contributors: Shane Loretz

1.13.1 (2019-02-14)

• Fix actionlib regression
• Contributors: Bence Magyar

1.13.0 (2019-02-11)

• Update readme
• use this_thread::sleep_for instead of usleep (#32)
• specify RUNTIME DESTINATION for libraries (#33) needed for exporting DLLs on Windows
• Made RealtimeBuffer's copy-constructor const
• Contributors: Bence Magyar, Gennaro Raiola, James Xu, Mathias Lüdtke, Matt Reynolds

1.12.0 (2018-05-19)

• Add RealtimePublisherSharedPtr<T>
• boost::shared_ptr -> std::shared_ptr
• Contributors: Bence Magyar

1.11.0 (2017-11-06)

• Updated RT goal handle to handle cancel requests (#22)
• switch to industrial_ci (#20)
• Contributors: Mathias Lüdtke, Nick Lamprianidis

1.10.0 (2017-06-28)

• Added constructor in RTB for objects without default constructor
• Add feedback sending capability to RealtimeServerGoalHandle.
• Contributors: Bence Magyar, Aris Synodinos, Miguel Prada, graiola

1.9.1 (2015-04-30)

• RealtimeBox: Fix member doc
• Contributors: Adolfo Rodriguez Tsouroukdissian, Dave Coleman

1.9.0 (2014-05-12)

• Remove rosbuild artifacts.
• Cleaned up CMake and removed unnecessary dependencies
• Contributors: Adolfo Rodriguez Tsouroukdissian, Dave Coleman

1.8.3 (2014-02-05)

• Fix linking The library needs to be linked against roscpp and Boost thread. GCC won't complain about missing symbols for a shared library, but other linkers (like clang's) will not accept it by default.
• Added Travis support
• Renamed manifest.xml so it doesn't brek rosdep
• Contributors: Adolfo Rodriguez Tsouroukdissian, Dave Coleman, Paul Mathieu

1.8.2 (2013-08-29)

• Append newline.
• Merge pull request #4 from pal-robotics/hydro-devel Add realtime action server goal handle.
• Add realtime action server goal handle.
  • Factored out from PR2's implementation of the JointTrajectoryActionController.
• Contributors: Adolfo Rodriguez Tsouroukdissian, Austin Hendrix

1.8.1 (2013-07-29)

• Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/master' into hydro-devel
• Merge pull request #2 from davetcoleman/master Made member vars mutable in realtime buffer to allow const read
• initialize realtime_data and non_realtime_data before dereferencing and assigning to them in copy constructor
• Added comments
• Added readFromNonRT() function, overloaded assignment and copy constructor, and made mutex mutable.
• Fix typos.
• Fix build order.
• Contributors: Austin Hendrix, Dave Coleman

1.8.0 (2013-06-25)

• Version 1.8.0
• Install channelecho.py under catkin.
• adding install targets
• adding missing manifests
• merging CMakeLists.txt files from rosbuild and catkin
• adding hybrid-buildsystem makefiles
• catkinizing, could still be cleaned up
• initialize correctly
• compile realtime clock into library
• new interface with time and duration
• support both condition and polling version to allow re-use of binaries in realtime; add realtime buffer to get data from non-RT into RT
• Make the realtime publisher realtime safe, without needing an rt_condition; we need the same binaries to work on both non-rt and rt.
• Make the realtime publisher realtime safe, without needing an rt_condition; we need the same binaries to work in both non-rt and rt.
• move realtime tools in ros control, and create empty constructors for handles
• Contributors: Austin Hendrix, Jonathan Bohren, Wim Meeussen, hiDOF