For the Rock toolchain to work, there are a few things that all oroGen component have that normal RTT components do not have. This page is a reference to these “additions”, for RTT developers that want to understand what is different between a normal RTT component and an oroGen component.

1. a getModelName operation is defined on all oroGen components. This operation returns the full model name for the task (in practice, the class name). So, for instance, the “Task” task context in the hokuyo oroGen project will return hokuyo::Task.

   This is implemented so that orocos.rb is able to automatically load oroGen specification files when contacting a task context, regardless of how this task context has been deployed and/or started.

2. a ‘state’ port with type ‘int’ is defined, in which all the state transitions are exported. The allowed values in this port are defined by an oroGen-generated enumeration called orogen_project::task_name_STATES. (e.g. hokuyo::Task_STATES). The management of it is done transparently by orocos.rb.

3. all known input ports are automatically cleared in startHook()