User Guide

For developers building applications on top of ZeroDDS. Eight-section condensed handbook.

What is ZeroDDS

Pure-Rust implementation of the OMG Data Distribution Service. Wire-byte-identical to Cyclone DDS, OpenDDS, Fast DDS, RTI Connext on RTPS 2.5. Comes with bridges to MQTT, AMQP, CoAP, gRPC, CORBA, ROS-2, WebSocket and bindings for nine languages.

Install

Pick the channel that matches your platform. All Linux binaries are minisign-signed against a public key shipped in the source repository; macOS binaries are Apple-codesigned and notarized.

Linux — Debian / Ubuntu / derivatives

curl -fsSL https://packages.zerodds.org/zerodds.gpg \
  | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/zerodds.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/zerodds.gpg] \
  https://packages.zerodds.org/deb bookworm main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zerodds.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install zerodds

Linux — Fedora / RHEL / derivatives

sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo \
  https://packages.zerodds.org/rpm/zerodds.repo
sudo dnf install zerodds

macOS — Homebrew

brew install zero-objects/homebrew-zerodds/zerodds

Linux — Arch / Manjaro (AUR)

yay -S zerodds-bin    # pre-built binary package
# or:
yay -S zerodds        # build from source

Linux — Gentoo

sudo eselect repository add zerodds git \
  https://github.com/zero-objects/gentoo-overlay
sudo emaint sync -r zerodds
sudo emerge net-libs/zerodds

Windows — Scoop

scoop bucket add zerodds https://github.com/zero-objects/scoop-zerodds
scoop install zerodds

Cross-platform — Docker

# GitHub Container Registry (multi-arch: linux/amd64 + linux/arm64)
docker pull ghcr.io/zero-objects/zerodds-ws-bridged:1.0.0-rc.1
docker pull ghcr.io/zero-objects/zerodds-mqtt-bridged:1.0.0-rc.1
# (or fishermen21/zerodds-<daemon> on Docker Hub)

Cross-platform — Cargo (Rust toolchain)

cargo add zerodds-dcps zerodds-rtps zerodds-discovery
# or build from source:
git clone https://github.com/zero-objects/zero-dds
cd zero-dds && cargo build --release

Distro & native installer roadmap

First Pub/Sub

Publisher:

use dds_dcps::{Factory, QosProfileBuilder};

let factory = Factory::default();
let participant = factory.create_participant(0)?;
let topic = participant.create_topic::<String>("Greetings")?;
let publisher = participant.create_publisher()?;
let writer = publisher.create_writer(&topic, &QosProfileBuilder::reliable())?;

writer.write(&"Hello, DDS!".to_string())?;

Subscriber pattern is symmetric. Full 15-chapter walk-through with cross-language ports lives in examples/tutorials/dds-chat.

QoS Cheatsheet

Bridges

Pick the bridge for your protocol:

Security

Two layers:

• DDS-Security 1.2 — OMG plugins enabled via Participant QoS. Auth + AccessControl + Crypto + Logging + DataTagging.
• bridge-security — TLS 1.3 (rustls), bearer / JWT-RS256 / mTLS / SASL-PLAIN, ACL with wildcard + group matching, SIGHUP cert rotation.

Troubleshooting

• Discovery silent — check that multicast is enabled on your network. Use zerodds-admin discovery snapshot to capture SPDP/SEDP traffic.
• Sample lost — verify Reliability=Reliable on both writer and reader. BestEffort drops on congestion.
• Wire-incompat with another DDS — capture both sides with tcpdump -i any -X port 7400 and diff.
• Cross-language struct mismatch — regenerate code with idlc from a single canonical IDL.
• TLS handshake fails — check ALPN protocol matches; mTLS requires the client cert chain rooted in the server's CA.

Spec Mapping

Which OMG spec covers which feature:

• Pub/Sub API — DDS-DCPS 1.4 §2.2.
• Wire format — DDSI-RTPS 2.5 + DDS-XTypes 1.3 (XCDR1/XCDR2).
• Type system — DDS-XTypes 1.3 + IDL 4.2.
• Security — DDS-Security 1.2.
• QoS XML — DDS-XML 1.0.
• Constrained devices — DDS-XRCE 1.0.
• RPC — DDS-RPC 1.0.

Full handbook on GitHub →