[ANNOUNCE] Real-Time Toolkit and Orocos Component Library 1.4.0 released

With quite some delay, but in good shape, the new RTT and OCL releases 
have arrived. We decided to set the 'major' version numbers (1.4) of the RTT 
and OCL equal, such that it is easier for users to match them. 

Most importantly, Debian 'etch' packages are available thanks to a very 
helpful  user. We provide the RTT for standard Linux (-gnulinux) RTAI/LXRT 
(-lxrt) and Xenomai (-xenomai). The OCL is currently only available for 
standard Linux and LXRT. Also, not all OCL components are available yet, 
particularly those depending on KDL. You can find them here:

 deb http://svn.fmtc.be/debian etch main

We used the Xenomai packages from:

 deb http://zathras.tuxcnc.org/xenomai sid main

You can type 
  apt-get install orocos-ocl-gnulinux-bin orocos-ocl-gnulinux-dev
to get all the OCL packages for standard Linux. There are device drivers for 
Comedi and the peak-systems can driver. Use 
  apt-get install peak-linux-driver-modules-2.6.18-5-686  
comedi-modules-2.6.18-5.686 
for obtaining them. 

You can then start the OCL deployer application[1] with 'deployer-gnulinux' or 
start the CORBA enabled variants with 'cdeployer-gnulinux' (server) 
and 'ctaskbrowser-gnulinux' (remote console). 
For setting up CORBA correctly, see the CORBA section in the Component 
Builder's Manual : 
<http://www.orocos.org/stable/documentation/rtt/v1.4.x/doc-xml/orocos-components-manual.html#id2531749>

For LXRT, the RTT/OCL packages and executables have the -lxrt suffix. A 
pre-packaged RTAI kernel is available as well, with Comedi support. However, 
not all device drivers are enabled, but it should boot most 'i386' systems. 
The RTAI kernel version is 2.6.19-rtai-ipipe-1.7-01

See below for the official release notes. If you have any problems or 
questions, you can contact us on the Orocos-users forum:
<http://www.orocos.org/orocos/forum>
or post directly to the orocos-users mailing list.

[1] 
<http://www.orocos.org/stable/documentation/ocl/v1.4.x/doc-xml/orocos-deployment.html>
=====================================================================

           The Orocos Real-Time Toolkit v1.4.0.
  The Orocos development team is pleased to announce the third major
feature release of the Real-Time Toolkit, a C++ toolkit for building
 component based, real-time robotics and machine control applications.

You can download this release from
  <http://www.orocos.org/stable/rtt/v1.4.0/orocos-rtt-1.4.0-src.tar.bz2>
and read the installation instructions on
  
<http://www.orocos.org/stable/documentation/rtt/v1.4.x/doc-xml/orocos-installation.html>


The Real-Time Toolkit (RTT) library allows application designers to
build highly configurable and interactive component-based real-time
control applications. You might use it to:

 * Control devices ranging from sensors to complete robots
 * Capture and plot the data flows between components
 * Tune your algorithms at run-time
 * Write your controller as a hierarchical state machine
 * Interact with your devices directly from a GUI or command prompt
 * Extend it with your own data types
 * Configure components and the application from XML files
 * Extend your legacy control applications with all the above
 * Run it on standard operating systems as well as dedicated real-time
   systems

This release has improved how components can communicate over a
network, allowing to choose a communication protocol at runtime
instead of compile time. Also component compile times and memory footprints
have drastically improved.
This release's major feature highlights are:

 * Components have been extended with an Error and Active state
 * Optional, 'hot' pluggable CORBA library for network communication
 * Timer class (and TimerComponent in OCL) for generating time based events
 * More efficient periodic task execution
 * Debian packages for Debian Etch at
   deb http://svn.fmtc.be/debian etch contrib

If you'd like a high level overview of the Orocos libraries, visit
  
<http://www.orocos.org/stable/documentation/rtt/v1.4.x/doc-xml/orocos-overview.html>
If you'd like to get started building your own components, visit
  
<http://www.orocos.org/stable/documentation/rtt/v1.4.x/doc-xml/orocos-components-manual.html>

This release is backwards compatible with the 1.0.x and 1.2.x releases, 
although
some functionality has been deprecated or alternative usage patterns
are preferred. These and other changes and improvements can be found
in the Orocos RTT Changes document on
  
<http://www.orocos.org/stable/documentation/rtt/v1.4.x/doc-xml/orocos-rtt-changes.html>


         Orocos Components Library (OCL) v1.4.0
This release of the Orocos Components Library is aimed at the
Real-Time Toolkit v1.4.0. and offers improved functionality for
loading and configuring components dynamically at run-time.  The OCL
major version (1.4) has been made identical to the RTT major version
in order to ease matching the correct versions of both libraries. Some
components of the OCL library are now also available as Debian 4.0
'Etch' packages from
 deb http://svn.fmtc.be/debian etch main

A new stand-alone applications has been added as well:
 cdeployer: loads other components into the current process and
 is accessible over a network using the CORBA transport.

An overview of the components is available here:
  
<http://www.orocos.org/stable/documentation/ocl/v1.4.x/doc-xml/ocl-overview.html>

This release can be downloaded here:
  <http://www.orocos.org/stable/ocl/v1.4.0/orocos-ocl-1.4.0-src.tar.bz2>

-- 
Peter Soetens -- FMTC -- <http://www.fmtc.be>
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