HOWTO-change-mavlink-msg.md

Updating MAVLink Message Set

To update the MAVLink message set, you will need to rebuild both mavlink2rest and rust-mavlink. As of August 2023, this process is not straightforward and requires following specific instructions.

Firstly, you need to set up a working RUST environment. Follow the official instructions at https://www.rust-lang.org/ to set up your Rust environment.

Next, obtain the source code of rust-mavlink and update its MAVLink submodule to acquire the correct MAVLink revision:

git clone git@github.com:mavlink/rust-mavlink.git --recursive

Retrieve the source code of mavlink2rest as well:

git clone https://github.com/khancyr/mavlink2rest --recursive

Select the version of mavlink2rest you desire. Open the Cargo.toml file to determine the corresponding version of rust-mavlink. Then, checkout the desired version of rust-mavlink, for example:

cd rust-mavlink/
git checkout 0.10.2

Now, you can edit the MAVLink message definitions located in mavlink/message_definitions/v1.0.

Compile rust-mavlink with the desired message set you wish to support. In this example, we'll use the default ardupilotmega.xml:

cargo install --path . --features="ardupilotmega emit-extensions"

Once the compilation is finished, return to the Cargo.toml file of mavlink2rest and update the path to the local rust-mavlink library.

Before:

mavlink = { git = "https://github.com/mavlink/rust-mavlink", rev = "0.10.2", features = [ "ardupilotmega", "emit-extensions"] }

After:

mavlink = { path="/home/khancyr/Workspace/rust-mavlink", features = [ "ardupilotmega", "emit-extensions"] }

This change points to the updated rust-mavlink library containing the updated MAVLink messages.

Finally, compile mavlink2rest:

cargo install --path .

Your newly compiled mavlink2rest will now comprehend your newly added messages.