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Linux Build

These instructions are written for Ubuntu 22.04, but should work on the Raspberry Pi or any other Linux distribution.

These instructions are designed for Thunder R4 or newer. Older versions of Thunder may differ.

Note

The Thunder projects can be customized with additional cmake options -D. To obtain a list of all possible project-specific options, add -L to the cmake commands below.

The cmake commands can contain many options, so it is convenient to format them into separate lines with \.

Build & Installation

The following instructions will use the CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX option to install Thunder in a subdirectory of the current working directory instead of in the system-wide directories. This is recommended for development, but for production use you may need to change/remove this option to install Thunder in standard linux locations.

1. Install Dependencies

These instructions are based on Ubuntu 22.04 - you may need to change this for your distros package manager

sudo apt install build-essential pkg-config cmake ninja-build libusb-1.0-0-dev zlib1g-dev libssl-dev

Thunder also uses Python 3 for code and documentation generation scripts. Ensure you have at least Python 3.5 installed and install the jsonref library with pip:

pip install jsonref

2. Build Thunder Tools

Thunder Tools are various scripts and code generators used to build Thunder and any plugins. In older Thunder versions, they lived inside the main Thunder repo but have now been moved to their own repo.

First, change the directory to where you want to build Thunder.

Then clone ThunderTools repo: 

git clone https://github.com/rdkcentral/ThunderTools.git
Next, we need to run the following commands to build and then install the code generators inside ThunderTools: 
cmake -G Ninja -S ThunderTools -B build/ThunderTools -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="install"

cmake --build build/ThunderTools --target install

3. Build Thunder

Clone the Thunder repo:

git clone https://github.com/rdkcentral/Thunder.git

Run the following commands to build and then install Thunder. The available -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE options are: [Debug, Release, MinSizeRel].

cmake -G Ninja -S Thunder -B build/Thunder \
-DBINDING="127.0.0.1" \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Debug" \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="install" \
-DPORT="55555" \
-DTOOLS_SYSROOT="${PWD}" \
-DINITV_SCRIPT=OFF 

cmake --build build/Thunder --target install

4. Build ThunderInterfaces

Note

The ThunderInterfaces repo is tagged/versioned the same as the main Thunder repo. So if you are using Thunder R4.1 for example, you should also use the R4.1 tag of ThunderInterfaces

Clone the ThunderInterfaces repo:

git clone https://github.com/rdkcentral/ThunderInterfaces.git

Run the following commands to build and then install ThunderInterfaces:

cmake -G Ninja -S ThunderInterfaces -B build/ThunderInterfaces \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="install"

cmake --build build/ThunderInterfaces --target install

5. Build Plugins

The exact repo and steps here will depend on exactly which plugins you want to build.

ThunderNanoServices

Clone the ThunderNanoServices repo: 

git clone https://github.com/rdkcentral/ThunderNanoServices.git

Run the following commands to build and then install ThunderNanoServices.

In the command below, there is a complete list of plugins that do not require any outside software/hardware dependencies. However, you should customise this to include the plugins you require for your platform.

cmake -G Ninja -S ThunderNanoServices -B build/ThunderNanoServices \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="install" \
-DPLUGIN_COMMANDER=ON \
-DPLUGIN_DIALSERVER=ON \
-DPLUGIN_DICTIONARY=ON \
-DPLUGIN_FILETRANSFER=ON \
-DPLUGIN_INPUTSWITCH=ON \
-DPLUGIN_PROCESSMONITOR=ON \
-DPLUGIN_RESOURCEMONITOR=ON \
-DPLUGIN_SYSTEMCOMMANDS=ON \
-DPLUGIN_SWITCHBOARD=ON \
-DPLUGIN_WEBPROXY=ON \
-DPLUGIN_WEBSHELL=ON 

cmake --build build/ThunderNanoServices --target install

ThunderNanoServicesRDK

Clone the ThunderNanoServicesRDK repo:

git clone https://github.com/WebPlatformForEmbedded/ThunderNanoServicesRDK.git

Run the following commands to build and then install ThunderNanoServicesRDK.

In the command below, there is a complete list of plugins that do not require any outside software/hardware dependencies. However, you should customise this to include the plugins you require for your platform.

cmake -G Ninja -S ThunderNanoServicesRDK -B build/ThunderNanoServicesRDK \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="install" \
-DPLUGIN_DEVICEINFO=ON \
-DPLUGIN_MESSAGECONTROL=ON \
-DPLUGIN_MESSENGER=ON \
-DPLUGIN_MONITOR=ON \
-DPLUGIN_OPENCDMI=ON \
-DPLUGIN_PERFORMANCEMETRICS=ON

cmake --build build/ThunderNanoServicesRDK --target install

6. Build Thunder Client Libraries (optional)

If you require a convenience library from the ThunderClientLibraries repo, follow the below steps:

Clone the ThunderClientLibraries repo:

git clone https://github.com/rdkcentral/ThunderClientLibraries.git

Run the following commands to build and then install ThunderClientLibraries:

In the command below, there is a complete list of client libraries that do not require any outside dependencies; therefore, each of them can be successfully built in this simple fashion.

cmake -G Ninja -S ThunderClientLibraries -B build/ThunderClientLibraries \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="install" \
-DBLUETOOTHAUDIOSINK=ON \
-DDEVICEINFO=ON \
-DDISPLAYINFO=ON \
-DSECURITYAGENT=ON \
-DPLAYERINFO=ON \
-DPROTOCOLS=ON \
-DVIRTUALINPUT=ON

cmake --build build/ThunderClientLibraries --target install

7. Build Thunder UI (optional)

Clone the ThunderUI repo:

git clone https://github.com/rdkcentral/ThunderUI.git

First, you have to install NodeJS + NPM, and this can be done with the following command:

sudo apt install nodejs npm

Run the following commands to build and then install ThunderUI:

cmake -G Ninja -S ThunderUI -B build/ThunderUI \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="install"

cmake --build build/ThunderUI --target install

Run Thunder

After everything has been built and installed correctly, we can run Thunder.

Since we installed Thunder in a custom installation directory, we need to provide an LD_LIBRARY_PATH to that location and set PATH to include the bin directory. If the libraries are installed in system-wide locations (e.g. /usr/lib and /usr/bin) then those environment variables are not required

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=${PWD}/install/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
export PATH=${PWD}/install/bin:${PATH}

Thunder -f -c ${PWD}/install/etc/Thunder/config.json

The following arguments should be specified to the Thunder binary:

  • -f: Flush plugin messages/logs directly to the console - useful for debugging. In production, you should use the MessageControl plugin to forward messages to a suitable sink.
  • -c: Path to Thunder config file

All being well, you should see Thunder start up:

[Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:04:31]:[PluginHost.cpp:584]:[main]:[Startup]: Thunder
[Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:04:31]:[PluginHost.cpp:585]:[main]:[Startup]: Starting time: Tue, 06 Jun 2023 09:04:31 GMT
[Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:04:31]:[PluginHost.cpp:586]:[main]:[Startup]: Process Id:    25382
[Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:04:31]:[PluginHost.cpp:587]:[main]:[Startup]: Tree ref:      engineering_build_for_debug_purpose_only
[Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:04:31]:[PluginHost.cpp:588]:[main]:[Startup]: Build ref:     engineering_build_for_debug_purpose_only
[Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:04:31]:[PluginHost.cpp:589]:[main]:[Startup]: Version:       4:0:0
...
[Tue, 06 Jun 2023 10:04:32]:[PluginHost.cpp:609]:[main]:[Startup]: Thunder actively listening

If you followed these instructions, Thunder will be listening for web requests on localhost:55555

To exit the framework, press q and then enter.