erl_common

This CMake project provides erl_common which is a collection of commonly used C++ libraries such as

• Eigen: linear algebra
• LAPACK: linear algebra
• Intel MKL: linear algebra
• Boost: filesystem, program_options, system, thread, etc.
• OpenCV: image processing
• fmt: Python f-string style formatting
• absl: Google's common libraries (abseil-cpp)
• Pangolin: 2d curve plotting and 3d trajectory visualization (deprecated)
• Plplot: 2d and 3d plotting library
• OpenMP: multi-threading
• Python3: for Python binding or embedding Python interpreter in C++
• pybind11: for Python binding or embedding Python interpreter in C++
• GTest: Google Test
• nlohmann_json: JSON parser
• YAML-CPP: YAML parser

and some utility functions and data structures like

• color print / logging
• assertion, timing, check results
• binary IO, csv IO
• C++ template helper
• C++ tqdm implementation
• support for embedding Python interpreter in C++
• random number generator
• string utilities
• storage order converter
• Eigen3 extension
• YAML-CPP extension
• OpenCV extension
• Plplot extension
• grid map and visualization
• general serialization and deserialization interface

Getting Started

Create Workspace

cd <your_workspace>
mkdir -p src
vcs import --input https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ExistentialRobotics/erl_common/refs/head/main/erl_common.repos src

Install Dependencies

• CMake >= 3.24
• OpenMP
• Boost
• Eigen3
• nlohmann_json
• OpenCV
• nanoflann
• yaml-cpp
• Intel MKL
• LAPACK
• LAPACKE
• fmt
• absl
• Pangolin
• Python3
• pybind11
• GTest

Scripts for installing dependencies on Ubuntu 20.04

Scripts for installing dependencies on Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04

Scripts for installing dependencies on Arch Linux

We also provide docker files for building a docker image with all dependencies installed. For example, you can run

cd <your_workspace>/src/erl_common/docker/ubuntu-20.04
./build.bash

to build a docker image with all dependencies installed on Ubuntu 20.04.

This library also depends on erl_cmake_tools.

Build from Source

As a standard CMake package

cd <your_workspace>
touch CMakeLists.txt

Add the following lines to your CMakeLists.txt:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.16)
project(<your_project_name>)
add_subdirectory(src/erl_cmake_tools)
add_subdirectory(src/erl_common)

Then run the following commands:

mkdir -p build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make -j`nproc`

As a ROS package

cd <your_workspace>
source /opt/ros/<distro>/setup.bash
# for ROS1
catkin build erl_common
source devel/setup.bash
# for ROS2
colcon build --packages-up-to erl_common
source install/setup.bash

See also 🚪erl_common_ros for additional ROS tools.

As a Python package

• Make sure you have installed all dependencies.
• Make sure you have the correct Python environment activated, pipenv is recommended.

cd <your_workspace>
for package in erl_cmake_tools erl_common; do
    cd src/$package
    pip install . --verbose
    cd ../..
done