SpatialOS C++ Blank project

This is a SpatialOS project which can serve as a template for building SpatialOS workers using the C++ SDK. It uses CMake as the build system. If you're new to SpatialOS, have a look at Introduction to the C++ worker SDK.

About managed and external workers

Have a look at the Glossary entry for Workers for a complete discussion and examples.

Dependencies

This project requires the following software to be installed:

• CMake 3.7+
• (Windows) Visual Studio 2017 or above.
• (macOS) Xcode
• (Linux) gcc / clang and make (for the "Unix Makefiles" CMake project generator)

Quick start

The build scripts (build.json) for each worker:

1. Generate C++ code from schema
2. Download the C++ worker SDK
3. Create a cmake_build directory in the worker directory
4. Invoke cmake with arguments depending on the target platform

To build and launch a local deployment execute the following commands:

spatial worker build
spatial local launch --runtime_version=14.5.4

To connect a new instance of the "External" worker type to a running local deployment (after spatial local launch):

spatial local worker launch External local

What the project does

It's a blank project so the short answer is - not much. The snapshot file in this project contains a single entity with an ACL which matches the Managed worker attributes. When you launch a deployment, a single instance of the Managed worker will be started as configured in default_launch.json.

After connecting successfully both the Managed and External workers log a message to SpatialOS which should be displayed in the output of spatial local launch as it's running. Then they just spin in a loop processing the Ops list.

When SpatialOS disconnects a worker, a message is written to the console output of the worker and it exits with an error status.

Instances of the External worker won't have any entities added to their view because they don't have write access to anything in the snapshot.

Project structure

The CMake project hierarchy doesn't exactly match the directory structure of the project. For example the projects for workers add as subdirectories the schema and dependencies projects.

This is how projects are structured in the directory:

+-- schema/CMakeLists.txt
+-- dependencies/CMakeLists.txt
+-- workers
    |-- External/
    |   |-- External/CMakeLists.txt
    |   |-- CMakeLists.txt
    |   |-- build.json
    |-- Managed/
        |-- Managed/CMakeLists.txt
        |-- CMakeLists.txt
        |-- build.json

This enables you to keep the worker directories free of CMake files for schema and dependencies while not needing a CMake file at the root of the project.

The schema directory contains a sample empty component called blank. It is not used by the workers directly so feel free to delete it but it's there to show how sources generated from the schema could be linked in the worker binary. See schema/CMakeLists.txt which creates a library with all generated sources.

You can see (and edit) the content of the snapshot in text format by running a command to convert it:

spatial project history snapshot convert --input=<path> --input-format=binary --output=<path> --output-format=text

The worker project

The following applies to both the Managed and External worker projects but examples will only be about Managed.

After running spatial build the generated project by CMake will be in workers/Managed/cmake_build. Exactly what it contains will depend on the generator you use. A worker project includes 3 subdirectories in its CMakeLists.txt - dependencies, schema and Managed. The first two are not true subdirectories of workers/Managed in the file structure but their binary directories are set as if they were.

On Windows, both the release and debug builds of the Worker SDK are downloaded and set up correctly in the CMakeLists.txt. This means that both the Release and Debug configurations in the generated Visual Studio solution (.sln) should build and link correctly without any further changes.

Attaching a debugger

If you use a Visual Studio generator with CMake, the generated solution contains several projects to match the build targets. You can start a worker from Visual Studio by setting the project matching the worker name as the startup project for the solution. It will try to connect to a local deployment by default. You can customize the connection parameters by navigating to Properties > Configuration properties > Debugging to set the command arguments. Using receptionist localhost 7777 DebugWorker as the command arguments for example will connect a new instance of the worker named DebugWorker via the receptionist to a local running deployment. You can do this for both worker types that come with this project. Make sure you are starting the project using a local debugger (e.g. Local Windows Debugger).

Cloud deployment

Our cloud deployment environment is based on Linux, so therefore if you're not using Linux, you'll have to set up a cross-compile toolchain and build out a Linux binary (due to the nature of C++). More information can be found here.

If using Windows, options include (but are not limited to):

• Install Ubuntu using the Windows Subsystem for Linux, then build a Linux worker from within that environment.
• Install Ubuntu in a Virtual Machine with either VirtualBox or VMware Workstation Player.
• Set up a cross-compiler to be used from Windows, such as the one distributed by Unreal Engine: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Platforms/Linux/GettingStarted
• Use the Visual Studio 2017 CMake Linux support: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/linux/cmake-linux-project?view=vs-2017

Once this is done and you have successfully built a Linux assembly, set the project_name field in spatialos.json to match your SpatialOS project name. Then upload and launch:

spatial cloud upload <assembly-name>
spatial cloud launch <assembly-name> default_launch.json <deployment-name> --snapshot=<snapshot-path> --runtime_version=14.5.4

See spatial cloud connect external if you want to connect to a cloud deployment. In addition, the External worker has a second external launch configuration called cloud which could be used to connect provided that you know the deployment name and have a login token:

spatial local worker launch External cloud <deployment-name> <login-token>

Integrating with an existing project

If you have an existing project, to add a new C++ worker to it:

1. Decide whether the worker you're adding will be used as a managed or external worker.
2. Copy the corresponding directory (e.g. workers/Managed) into the workers directory of your existing project.
3. In the worker project CMakeLists.txt set SCHEMA_SOURCE_DIR and WORKER_SDK_DIR to point to the CMake projects in your project that generate the corresponding targets and if the targets have different names from Schema and WorkerSdk also rename those.
4. Add it to the workers definition in your SpatialOS launch configuration (e.g. default_launch.json)