The make targets and make results have changed. One has now 'make rtt'
(equivalent to 'make all'), 'make rtt-embedded' or 'make rtt-corba'.
The resulting library and .pc file have the names 'liborocos-rtt.a'
and 'orocos-rtt.pc' respectively. All standard headers are installed in the
'rtt' directory. The device interface headers reside in 'rtt/dev'. The
OS headers reside in 'rtt/os'. The Corba headers are in 'rtt/corba'.
See
Clean up the build system and

for all details.

The 'ORO_...' namespaces of Orocos have been renamed to 'RTT', 'RTT::OS', etc.
See
[Project] new Orocos namespace for all details.

The Event,
Method,
Command,
Property,
Attribute and
DataPort classes have changed in usage
semantics. All these classes require a "name" as a
constructor parameter in order to be initialised. When no
"name" is given (the default constructor) the objects are
empty boxes which will refuse to operate. In order to
check for this condition, all these classes have a
ready() method which returns true if
the object is correctly setup. These new semantics allow
far-going abstraction and network distribution of these
primitives. See
Commands and Methods : Away with the Template* classes,

[API] Improve Attribute/Property usage and

[API] Change event 'add' methods for all details.

The addEvent,
addMethod,
addCommand,
addProperty,
addAttribute and
addPort functions
have been added to replace the 'TemplateFactory'
classes of prior Orocos versions.
See
Commands and Methods : Away with the Template* classes,

[API] Improve Attribute/Property usage and

[API] Change event 'add' methods for all details and a script
which converts 0.24.0 application code to the new syntax.

The device drivers have been removed from the RealTime Toolkit.
Their new home is the Orocos Components Library (OCL). This makes building
the RTT more simple and gives each device driver an easier to find place.
See
[Project] Move device drivers to orocos-components for all details.

The ORO_OS namespace has been renamed to RTT::OS.
See
[Project] new Orocos namespace for all details.
The headers are installed in 'rtt/os'.

The RTT::OS::PeriodicThread setToStop() function
now executes finalize() as well and no longer uses Events nor the
Completion Processor.
See
OS::PeriodicThread depends on RTT::Event, CompletionProcessor for all details.

The RTT::OS::ThreadInterface functions
makeHardRealTime(),
makeSoftRealTime() and
isHardRealTime() have been replaced
with bool
ThreadInterface::setScheduler(int) and
int
ThreadInterface::getScheduler() const. By default,
all threads (except the main thread) are created as 'hard
realtime' (if available). Use setScheduler to change the
default with an OS defined parameter. The rationale of
this decision has been discussed on

Remove ZTT and friends. This also lead to a renaming
of the equivalent functions in the fosi_internal.h
file.

The Event object has changed 'constructor'
semantics. An Event requires a "name" upon construction in order
to be usable. Nameless events are 'empty' and require initialisation.
See
[API] Change event 'add' methods for all details.

The Activity classes can no longer react to Events. Use an EventProcessor
or the ExecutionEngine to react to events.
See
[Project] Removing Events out of activities for all details.

The NonPreemptibleActivity, PreemptibleActivity,
NonRealTimeActivity classes and their Thread classes no
longer exist. Use (or subclass) the
PeriodicActivity instead and
add a priority level in the constructor. See
Remove ZTT and friends for all details.

The property reading and writing functions
of the PropertyLoader have changed
semantics. It is now possible to specify if all properties, some
properties or one property must be written to or read from a file.
The global 'find' function has been renamed to 'findProperty'.
See
reading properties does not fail for all details.

The emit statement for emitting events has
been replaced by the do statement in both
program scripts and state machine scripts.
See
Using events in TaskBrowser for all details.

The task.varname prefix, required in programs
and statemachines in order to access TaskContext variables has been
dropped. One can now address a TaskContext variable by just writing
varname in a script. The parser will not allow
name clashes between program script variables and TaskContext
variables in which the scripts are loaded.
See
Using properties from a state machine for all details.

The RTT::GenericTaskContext has been removed.
All its functionality is now available from the 'TaskContext' class,
although through a slightly different API.
See
Deprecate GenericTaskContext, upgrade TaskContext for all details.

The RTT::TaskBrowser has been
removed. All its functionality is now available from the
TaskBrowser component in
the Orocos Component Library. See
Remove RTT::TaskBrowser, use OCL::TaskBrowser
for all details.

The WriteDataPort has been renamed to
DataPort and a 'new' WriteDataPort
implementation with only a Get() function has been
added. This means that applications that did 'Get()' on a 'WriteDataPort'
will no longer compile and need to rename to 'DataPort'.
This was done to improve naming consistency with the
BufferPort class.
See
[API] Rename WriteDataPort class to DataPort for all details.

The RTT::Corba::ControlTask class
and related classes have been revised to map better to the
TaskContext interface. MethodFactory
has been renamed to RTT::Corba::MethodInterface,
CommandFactory
has been renamed to RTT::Corba::CommandInterface.
The RTT::Corba::TaskObject has been added
and getting a command or method from the interface is now
similar to plain C++ usage.

All created objects now have a destroy_X
IDL method which you must call to free the serverside object.

The classes and functions required to setup or access a component
have been greatly simplified and are more uniform in naming.
For example, adding a command is done by writing
commands()->addCommand(...), properties by properties()->addProperty(...)
etc and such for each primitive. Retrieving a 'pointer' to
a primitive from another TaskContext is then done by
peer->getCommand("name"), peer->getProperty("name") etc.
See The Component Builder's Manual for all details.

All Orocos primitives are to be used as 'objects' and not as 'pointers'.
For example, one does no longer write

Property<int>* myProp = peer->properties()->getProperty<int>("Prop");
assert( myProp != 0 );

but instead:

Property<int> myProp = peer->properties()->getProperty<int>("Prop");
assert( myProp.ready() );

The ready() method checks if "Prop" could be found and had the correct value.
This aproach must be taken for every Orocos primitive: Commands, Events, etc.
See The Component Builder's Manual for all details.

The Command's evaluate() function has been renamed to
done().
See [API] Commands: evaluate() deprecated, use done() for all details.

Orocos no longer has a hard dependency on Xerces, nor on
'cpf.dtd' for XML parsing. If Xerces is not detected on
your system, an internal (TinyXML) implementation is
used. Furthermore, the 'cpf.dtd' file is no longer
required to parse Orocos XML files. Orocos has this file
built-in and uses it to validate your document when the
XML parser supports it (i.e. Xerces). See
XML Parsing: DTD's and Parsers. for all details.

The readProperties and writeProperties
functions have become more strict. All properties must be read or written
or they will refuse to change any values. To have more flexible
behaviour, alternative functions have been added to fill the gap.
See
reading properties does not fail for all details.

One can emit events from the TaskBrowser by calling the event
by name and providing the arguments.
See
Using events in TaskBrowser for all details.

An TaskBrowser 'Component'
has been created which is more powerful than the classical
RTT::TaskBrowser. It dynamically
connects to Data Flow Ports and allows better testing of
unconnected components.