open62541 firststep on windows

OPC UA is a promising standard for future industrial applications. There are many implementations in C, C++, Python and Java.

open62541 is a pure C99 implementation, which could be a good option for embedded systems. I’ve commit some minor updates to it and I want to start learning it from the beginning.

The first step according to the manual is a simple server.

Let’s have a try on Windows with MingW64 gcc compiler.

mkdir ~/tutorials
git clone git@github.com:open62541/open62541.git
cd ~/tutorials/open62541
git submodule update --init --recursive

Terminal logs:

# git clone git@github.com:open62541/open62541.git
Cloning into 'open62541'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 57578, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (573/573), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (334/334), done.
remote: Total 57578 (delta 282), reused 435 (delta 219), pack-reused 57005
Receiving objects: 100% (57578/57578), 39.99 MiB | 1.92 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (43025/43025), done.
Updating files: 100% (1941/1941), done.

# git submodule update --init --recursive
Submodule 'deps/mdnsd' (https://github.com/Pro/mdnsd.git) registered for path 'deps/mdnsd'
Submodule 'deps/ua-nodeset' (https://github.com/OPCFoundation/UA-Nodeset) registered for path 'deps/ua-nodeset'
Cloning into '~/open62541_tutorials/open62541/deps/mdnsd'...
Cloning into '~/open62541_tutorials/open62541/deps/ua-nodeset'...
Submodule path 'deps/mdnsd': checked out '3151afe5899dba5125dffa9f4cf3ae1fe2edc0f0'
Submodule path 'deps/ua-nodeset': checked out '5fdc7d480901e405c78e5b0f429c7fcdbeef4d5d'

Install msys2 and open the shell, execute:

pacman -S mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc

cd ~/tutorials/open62541
cmake -DUA_ENABLE_AMALGAMATION=ON .
cmake --build .

After a successful compile, there will be a lib and two source code files:

# ls ~/tutorials/open62541/bin
libopen62541.a

# ls ~/tutorials/open62541/open62541.*
open62541.c  open62541.h

cd ~/tutorials
mkdir step1
cp open62541/open62541.* step1/
cp open62541/examples/tutorial_server_firststeps.c step1/

# ls ~/tutorials/step1/
open62541.c  open62541.h  tutorial_server_firststeps.c

Because tutorial_server_firststeps.c is written to be compiled together with the code base. If you want to compile with single file distribution, the #include part at the beginning should be changed, the whole code is like below:

#include "open62541.h"

#include <signal.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

static volatile UA_Boolean running = true;
static void stopHandler(int sig) {
    UA_LOG_INFO(UA_Log_Stdout, UA_LOGCATEGORY_USERLAND, "received ctrl-c");
    running = false;
}

int main(void) {
    signal(SIGINT, stopHandler);
    signal(SIGTERM, stopHandler);

    UA_Server *server = UA_Server_new();
    UA_ServerConfig_setDefault(UA_Server_getConfig(server));

    UA_StatusCode retval = UA_Server_run(server, &running);

    UA_Server_delete(server);
    return retval == UA_STATUSCODE_GOOD ? EXIT_SUCCESS : EXIT_FAILURE;
}

There will be a new executable file step1.exe. When it is executed, it will print these logs:

# ./step1.exe
[2021-11-04 19:21:20.084 (UTC+0800)] warn/server        AccessControl: Unconfigured AccessControl. Users have all permissions.
[2021-11-04 19:21:20.084 (UTC+0800)] info/server        AccessControl: Anonymous login is enabled
[2021-11-04 19:21:20.084 (UTC+0800)] info/server        AccessControl: x509 certificate user authentication is enabled
[2021-11-04 19:21:20.084 (UTC+0800)] warn/server        Username/Password configured, but no encrypting SecurityPolicy. This can leak credentials on the network.
[2021-11-04 19:21:20.084 (UTC+0800)] warn/userland      AcceptAll Certificate Verification. Any remote certificate will be accepted.
[2021-11-04 19:21:20.104 (UTC+0800)] info/network       TCP network layer listening on opc.tcp://kimi.im:4840/

Then you can use UaExpert to view the server info.