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This document explains how to download and install various packages of RHexLib on different platforms. Currently RHexLib has 4 different packages:

• RHexLib_core : The core software components common to all robot versions and developing institutions
• RHexLib_Michigan : Components which are specific to the Michigan version of the robot. These include experimental controllers, instantiation of the low level hardware layer for the Michigan RHex etc. etc.
• RHexLib_McGill : Components which are specific to the McGill version of the robot. Similar to RHexLib_Michigan.
• SimSect++ : A numerical integration engine for hybrid dynamical systems. It was originally developed for simulating RHex, but now has more general functionality. This package also includes RHexLib SimSect hardware layer interface which is required to run RHexLib programs on a simulated robot in Linux.

There are two options for downloading various versions of these packages. The first and the safest one is to use the stable releases of each of these packages. The official RHexLib releases of these can be accessed through SourceForge.These files are .tar.gz archives, and can be extracted using the following commands in both Linux and QNX. Note that the version number 0.0 in the following example will most likely be different.

# gzip -d RHexLib_core-0.0.tar.gz

# tar -xvf RHexLib_core-0.0.tar

Note that each of these packages will uncompress into their own directories. RHexLib packages uncompress into the following directories by default:

RHexLib_core --> RHexLib

RHexLib_Michigan --> MichLib

RHexLib_McGill --> McGillLib

SimSect++ --> SimSect++

I recommend, in your home directory, creating a directory called RHex, and uncompressing all the packages under there. So, something like the following would be a good idea (this assumes that you have put the packages you downloaded into your home directory).

# cd ~

# mkdir RHex

# cd RHex

# gzip -d ../RHexLib_core-0.0.tar.gz

# tar -xvf ../RHexLib_core-0.0.tar

etc. etc..

Having done this, you are now in a position to compile various components of RHexLib. Please read the compilation instructions next.

The other, more adventurous way of obtaining the RHexLib components is to use the rhex CVS repository in SourceForge. CVS is shorthand for Concurrent Version Control, which is a software tool to maintain various development version of software. RHexLib development also uses CVS, through which all past versions of the components as well as the most recent, least stable version of the library is available. I have also put together a small summary page explaining how to use the CVS facilities of SourceForge. Note that you will have to use CVS if you want to contribute back to the RHexLib source tree, rather than only using the distributions.