Overview

Getting Started with AstuteDDS

Follow these steps to go from package installation to a running publisher/subscriber in under five minutes.

Quick Start

1. Install Packages for Your Platform

Start with the package installation guide for your OS:

2. Verify Tooling and Environment

Required for the code onboarding path:

astutedds-idl --help

Optional checks (if installed):

astutedds-inspect -h

3. Build Your First Application

Follow First Application to generate code from IDL and build publisher/subscriber executables with CMake.

4. Explore Shapes Demo and Inspect

astutedds-shapes-demo
astutedds-inspect

Use two astutedds-shapes-demo instances to verify local pub/sub quickly, then use astutedds-inspect to confirm participants and topics are discovered.

Shapes Demo

The Shapes Demo is the fastest way to build an intuition for DDS behavior before writing application code. It gives you a live GUI for publishers, subscribers, topics, and QoS settings so you can immediately see the effect of each change.

Note

You can run two Astute Shapes Demo instances back-to-back to test publish and receive behavior immediately. Both instances can run on the same machine, or on different machines on the same DDS domain/network.

What to Try First

  • Switch reliability between BEST_EFFORT and RELIABLE and watch delivery behavior under load.
  • Change durability from VOLATILE to TRANSIENT_LOCAL and then start a late subscriber.
  • Adjust history depth and compare how much data is retained and delivered.
  • Try different publish rates to observe traffic and responsiveness.

Shapes Demo GUI

Astute Shapes Demo publishers interface for learning DDS QoS behavior

For a full walkthrough, see the Shapes Demo Guide.

What's Next?