Contribution Guide

Due to time constraints, I am unable to maintain this project constantly. However, the work is in progress, and any contributions are greatly appreciated.
Please feel free to open an issue. I will try to address any concerns as best I can. Please refer to the following guidelines for areas where help is needed:

General Guidelines

Use the minimal header includes as possible.
Follow file naming conventions .h for headers and .cc for implementations
The common/ folder should contain only interfaces or shared code.
Try to be highly modular with a focus on polymorphism.
Avoid using Boost libraries wherever possible.

Notes

The current version parses and renders model joints, links, and visual elements. Other elements like transmissions and sensors will be supported in future releases.
Physical consistency verification (e.g., inertia values) is not activated by default.
A scaling issue may occur during rendering due to element marker sizes.
The COLLADA file format for links’ visual or collision meshes is not yet supported. Only STL files, STEP will be handled, other CAD file format, will be added progressivlly
Multi-model handling, model interactions, and world parsing are not yet supported.
File paths should be absolute. Relative paths are not currently supported.

Style

We generally follow the Google Style Guide. Currently, there is no automated checking pipeline for this, but I will personally review the code. Contributions to add such a pipeline would be highly appreciated.

Current Tasks

Here are some key tasks where contributions are needed:

Complete the implementation of the urdf-graphiz interface.
Complete the development of core modules:
- camera
- camera_parser
Add support for transmission parsing.
- Complete the implementation of internal_graph module
Add Collada file support using the collada-dom library.
Ensure each implementation is tested in the test folder.
Add graph computation functions (e.g., computing model roots, leaves, etc.).
Implement utility functions for inertial, volume, and collision computations, such as:
- Total mass
- Center of inertia
- Total volume of the model
- Density, and more
- Precomputed Forward Kinematics
- Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) for fast collision detection

Additional Features

These additional features would improve the library:

Add a custom project logo.
Create a pipeline to deploy the library upon each release to vcpkg package manager.
Check/test the docker pipeline build status and create a custom workflow.

If you have any questions or need clarification, feel free to email me.

Thank you for contributing!

Ressources

How to install Ninja

On Windows (via Chocolatey):
```
choco install ninja
```
On linux

```bash sudo apt-get install ninja-build

How to install VCPKG
----

Official Link: <https://vcpkg.io/en/index.html>

```cmd
cd external
git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
.\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat # windows
./vcpkg/bootstrap-vcpkg.sh # Unix

How to install Google Test on ubuntu

for gtest installation : https://gist.github.com/Cartexius/4c437c084d6e388288201aadf9c8cdd5?permalink_comment_id=2822039#gistcomment-2822039

sudo apt-get install libgtest-dev
cd /usr/src/googletest/googletest
sudo mkdir build
cd build
sudo cmake ..
sudo make
sudo cp lib/libgtest* /usr/lib/
cd ..
sudo rm -rf build

Then do:

sudo mkdir /usr/local/lib/googletest
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libgtest.a /usr/local/lib/googletest/libgtest.a
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libgtest_main.a /usr/local/lib/googletest/libgtest_main.a

Formatter and Static Analyzer

Tooling

Clang-Format: Formatting tool for your C/C++ code:

Documentation for Clang-Format: Link

Clang-Tidy: Static linting tool for your C/C++ code:

Documentation for Clang-Tidy: Link

Cmake-Format:

pip install cmake-format # python 3.7+

Coverage Tools

sudo apt-get install gcovr
pip install -U gcovr

Install Clang Tools

It’s included in the LLVM toolchain, but also installable by apt, brew, winget etc.

https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/releases/tag/llvmorg-16.0.0