Adding a new port to VCPKG for use in a ROS Node

vcpkg has thousands of recipies for many different cross platform libraries. If you find that a dependency is not part of vcpkg, this walkthrough will help you get started. Every package has its own idiosyncrasies, so this is only a general ROS specific guide. Please refer to the documentation

Porting a C++ Dependency with vcpkg

Before you begin, you'll want to fork vcpkg into your github account. Next, Fix up your the ROS environment to use your fork.

cd c:\opt\ros\%ROS_DISTRO\x64\tools\vcpkg
git remote add upstream https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg
git remote set-url origin https://github.com/<your github>/vcpkg
git fetch --all
.\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat

Now we will add a port fpr the package. We will follow the process outlined on Packaging a Github Repo ↗.

Create a folder for the package you'd like to port, then add CONTROL and portfile.cmake files:

CONTROL

Source: <name>
Version: <latest release version>
Homepage: https://github.com/<organization>/<project>
Description: <Description from github>

portfile.cmake

include(vcpkg_common_functions)

vcpkg_from_github(
    OUT_SOURCE_PATH SOURCE_PATH
    REPO <organization>/<project>
    REF <latest release version>
    SHA512 1
    HEAD_REF master
)

vcpkg_configure_cmake(
    SOURCE_PATH ${SOURCE_PATH}
    PREFER_NINJA
)
vcpkg_install_cmake()
file(INSTALL ${SOURCE_PATH}/COPYING DESTINATION ${CURRENT_PACKAGES_DIR}/share/<project> RENAME copyright)

Then build with vcpkg build <project>:x64-windows

Which will error because of the SHA512 hash mismatch:

  File does not have expected hash:

          File path: [ C:/opt/vcpkg/downloads/temp/<package> ]
      Expected hash: [ 1 ]
        Actual hash: [ 02a61de205bd1dd116677cf4c530d7adb689442252aeafdc549d54531a62ab10e999062403ddb8aed3d89e4f248ad10c0998739b33004ec02e9914150854d47c ]

Which is replaced in the portfile above:

    SHA512 02a61de205bd1dd116677cf4c530d7adb689442252aeafdc549d54531a62ab10e999062403ddb8aed3d89e4f248ad10c0998739b33004ec02e9914150854d47c

Then build again with vcpkg build <package>:x64-windows

You may see errors message during the build. If so, you'll need to fix package and optionally provide a vcpkg patch file.

Patching during vcpkg build

We now need to change some code in order to make mavlink build correctly on Windows. Following vcpkg patching documentation, we will do the following.

Seed the patch by adding the original unpacked sources (this won't be checked in):

cd c:\opt\ros\%ROS_DISTRO%\x64\tools\vcpkg\buildtrees\<package>
git init
git add .
git commit -m "create patch"

Next, fix the sources and attempt to build. Once builds complete and testing succeeds, you can create a vcpkg patch:

cd c:\opt\ros\%ROS_DISTRO%\x64\tools\vcpkg\buildtrees\<package>\....
git diff > ..\..\..\..\ports\<port>\<path name>.patch

And include it in the portfile:

vcpkg_from_github(
    OUT_SOURCE_PATH SOURCE_PATH
    REPO <organization>/<project>
    REF <latest release version>
    SHA512 02a61de205bd1dd116677cf4c530d7adb689442252aeafdc549d54531a62ab10e999062403ddb8aed3d89e4f248ad10c0998739b33004ec02e9914150854d47c
    HEAD_REF master
    PATCHES
      "generate-msgs.patch"
)

Committing a vcpkg

Once you've successfully built and tested the vcpkg, you can submit the code and issue a pull request to the vcpkg repository.