Installation on Windows

Caution

Windows support is very experimental and only intended for experienced users. Since Windows is not real-time capable, communication errors are very likely. Further, these instructions are may not up-to-date and adjustments might be necessary.

Starting from libfranka >= 0.6.0, experimental Windows support is provided. This chapter describes how to install libfranka on Windows. franka_ros is not supported on Windows.

Note

Windows support has only been tested with Windows 10 and Visual Studio 2017.

Building from source

To build libfranka, install the following dependencies:

Eigen3

Poco

Both can be easily installed with vcpkg via cmd prompt:

cd /path/to/vcpkg
vcpkg install eigen3
vcpkg install poco

Download the source code by cloning libfranka from GitHub:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/frankaemika/libfranka

By default, this will check out the newest release of libfranka. If you want to build a particular version of libfranka instead, check out the corresponding Git tag:

git checkout <version>
git submodule update

Important

Only libfranka >= 0.6.0 has Windows support!

To build libfranka with Visual Studio open it as a CMake Project. Choose File > Open > CMake > C:PathTolibfrankaCMakeLists.txt.

Generate the CMakeSettings.json, which contains the CMake project settings. Select CMake > Cache > Generate > CMakeSettings.json. The file will be placed in your main libfranka directory.

The next step is to solve the build dependencies. Make sure the compiler is able to find the required dependencies. This can be done either by copying all needed .dll libries into the chosen build root determined by CMakeSettings.json or using cmakeCommandArgs. Open CMake > Change CMake settings > libfranka and add

{
  "cmakeCommandArgs": "-DPoco_DIR=C:\Path\To\Poco-Install\lib\cmake\Poco -DEigen3_DIR=C:\Path\To\Eigen-Install\lib\cmake\eigen3"
}

Choose CMake > Build to build libfranka into the build directory, determined in CMakeSettings.json

Hint

Alternatively you can build libfranka using the Developer Command Prompt for VS:

cd /path/to/libfranka
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DPoco_DIR=/Path/To/Poco/CMake/Config -DEigen3_DIR=/Path/To/Eigen/CMake/Config -G Ninja ..
ninja