CORO Software Development Environment

This guide provides a step-by-step guide to downloading, installing, and using the software required to submit an assignment for course 04-801 Cognitive Robotics. This environment is required to ensure that software developed by students can be compiled directly by the course instructor after it has been submitted.

Operating System

I assume you are running Windows 7.

I strongly recommend you turn off the option in Windows Explorer to hide file extensions. To do this, from Windows Explorer menu bar select Tools > Folder Options > View and make sure the tick box labelled Hide extensions for known file types is not ticked. If it is ticked, you will have problems identifying certain files later on (e.g. invoking the example.sln solution file to launch the C++ compiler).

If the Windows Explorer menu bar isn't visible, select Organize > Layout > Menu bar

C/C++ Compiler

Download the Microsoft Visual C++ Express compiler, version 10.0 (also known as Visual C++ 2010 or MSVC++ 2010). It is important to use this version; earlier versions are no longer supported by Microsoft and later versions cause problems with some libraries.

You can download the required installer from here.

Run the installer and follow the instructions.

Some versions of Windows 7 may need the the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 to be installed. If you have problems with CMake (see below) this is almost certainly the cause. Download and install Service Pack 1 by from here. You can check to see whether or not you have Service Pack 1 by checking the your version number: from the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express menu, select Help > About Visual C++ 2010 Express. You will see a message on the top right something like the following.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Version 10.0.40219.1 RTMRel
Microsoft .NET Framework
Version 4.0.30319 RTMRel

The RTMRel means Release To Manufacturing. If you have Service Pack 1 installed you would see something like the following.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Version 10.0.40219.1 SP1Rel
Microsoft .NET Framework
Version 4.0.30319 SP1Rel

CMake

Download CMake binaries from here. At time of writing the latest version is 3.7.1.

You can opt for either the WIN32 installer (cmake-3.7.1-win32-x86.msi) or the Windows zip file. The installer has the advantage that it gives you the option to update your system path automatically (which you should take by clicking the appropriate radio button during the installation process). If you choose the installer option, note that if you already have CMake version 3.4 or earlier you much uninstall it first.

04-801 Data Structures and Algorithms for Engineers Repository

Copy the 04-801 repository to the C: drive:

• Download a zip archive with all the files from here.
• Copy it to C: drive and unzip it so that you have a directory called C:\04-801.

C:\04-801 has with a sub-directory structure explained in class. For our purposes here, there is an C:\04-801\assignments directory and it will contain an example C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0 sub-directory. Later on, you will generate C:\04-801\assignments\assignment1 and C:\04-801\assignments\assignment2, and so on.

There is also a C:\04-801\lectures sub-directory. Later, I will make available the code from the lectures together with instructions on how to add it to the repository: the source code will go in the C:\04-801\lectures\src sub-directory and test data will go in the C:\04-801\lectures\data sub-directory.

The next step is to build a MSVC++ .sln solution file so that you can compile the 04-801 assignment0 executable. To do this, you need to run CMake against the C:04-801\assignments\assignment0 directory (where you will find the main CMakeLists.txt file). We use assignment0 because it is a dummy assignment but you will follow exactly the same procedure for all the real assignments.

• Launch the CMake GUI from the Windows 7 toolbar.

• In the Where is the source code: type (or browse to) C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0

• In the Where to build the binaries: type (or browse to) C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\build

• Select File > Delete Cache from the top menu (you must do this the first time in case there is an old invalid configuration in the 04-801 directory)

• Click Configure

• Select Visual Studio 10 (2010) from the drop-down menu as the generator for the project

• Click Finish and watch CMake configure your project. The dialogue box will still highlighted in red, so ...

• Click Configure two more times and everything should be fine.

• Click Generate to create the MSVC++ assignment0.sln file in the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\build directory.

Now you are ready to launch MSVC++ and build the 04-801 assignment0 executable.

• Go to the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\build directory and double-click the assignment0.sln file. This launches Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express.

• Select Release in the Solutions Configuration box.

• Select Build > Build Solution from the top menu, (if you don't see this and you see Debug > Build Solution instead, it's probably because your IDE is set to basic settings. To change this, select Tools > Settings > Expert Settings).

This will compile and link the programs in the the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\src sub-directory and install then in the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\bin directory.

Check to see that the example Vernon.exe executable is there. If it is not, then select Build > Configuration Manager from the menu and make sure the INSTALL check-box is ticked. Now rebuild the project again.

Note that you will have to tick this check-box every time you rebuild the .sln solution file with CMake. If you don't do this, then your new executable won't be installed in the bin directory and you'll end up becoming very confused because none of the changes you make to your source code will be reflected in the executable you run from the bin directory (because its an old version from a previous compilation).

Good! Now you are now ready to run the example Vernon.exe application that is provided with the 04-801 release. To do this, double click the< code>Vernon.exe</code> executable in C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\bin. Open input.txt file in C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\dataand, after running Vernon.exe, open the output.txt file, also in the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\data directory.

Try creating your own (dummy) assignment program. To do this, follow the following steps.

• Create a directory with your name, e.g. C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\src\Mylastname
• Copy the source files (.c, .cpp, .h) from the Vernon directory to the directory with your name.
• Edit the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\src\CMakeLists.txt file and replace ADD_SUBDIRECTORY(Vernon) with ADD_SUBDIRECTORY(Mylastname), where Mylastname is your last name.
• Run CMake again.
• Re-open the assignment0.sln file (remember, it's in the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\build directory).
• Your files should now be visible (and the Vernon ones will no longer be there) and you can now compile your code and install it in the bin directory by selecting Build > Build Solution from the top menu.
• Make sure that the INSTALL check-box is ticked when you select Build > Configuration Manager from the menu to ensure that your executable is installed in the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\bin directory.
• Finally, run your program in the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\bin directory. You might like to change the contents of input.txt in the C:\04-801\assignments\assignment0\data directory and re-run your program to convince yourself that everything is working properly.

For your first assignment, you will simply copy the assignment0 directory to assignment1 and follow a similar procedure, writing new assignment-specific code, of course. There are just one thing you need to do: edit the C:04-801\assignments\assignment1\CMakeLists.txt and change the project name from assignment0 to assignment1, viz:

 ##############################################
 PROJECT(assignment0)
 ############################################## 

becomes

 ##############################################
 PROJECT(assignment1)
 ############################################## 

Why, you might ask, do we do things this way? Apart from learning how to use a very useful tool, CMake, it makes it very easy for me to compile, run, and check your code. All you have to do is submit a zipped version of your Mylastname directory with your three source code files and then I simply unzip it and add it to the src directory (along with the all the other students and my own solution), run CMake, launch the .sln file, compile, install, and check each executable in bin against the test data file in my data directory. Because we build the solutions the same way, you are guaranteed that your code will compile, provided you have followed this procedure.