rcl: Common functionality for other ROS Client Libraries

rcl consists of functions and structs (pure C) organized into ROS concepts:

• Nodes
  • rcl/node.h
• Publisher
  • rcl/publisher.h
• Subscription
  • rcl/subscription.h
• Service Client
  • rcl/client.h
• Service Server
  • rcl/service.h
• Timer
  • rcl/timer.h

There are some functions for working with "Topics" and "Services":

• A function to validate a topic or service name (not necessarily fully qualified):
  • rcl_validate_topic_name()
  • rcl/validate_topic_name.h
• A function to expand a topic or service name to a fully qualified name:
  • rcl_expand_topic_name()
  • rcl/expand_topic_name.h

It also has some machinery that is necessary to wait on and act on these concepts:

• Initialization and shutdown management
  • rcl/init.h
• Wait sets for waiting on messages/service requests and responses/timers to be ready
  • rcl/wait.h
• Guard conditions for waking up wait sets asynchronously
  • rcl/guard_condition.h
• Functions for introspecting and getting notified of changes of the ROS graph
  • rcl/graph.h

Further still there are some useful abstractions and utilities:

• Allocator concept, which can be used to control allocation in rcl_* functions
  • rcl/allocator.h
• Concept of ROS Time and access to steady and system wall time
  • rcl/time.h
• Error handling functionality (C style)
  • rcl/error_handling.h
• Macros
  • rcl/macros.h
• Return code types
  • rcl/types.h
• Macros for controlling symbol visibility on the library
  • rcl/visibility_control.h