A Discrete-Event Network Simulator
Tutorial

Getting Started

This section is aimed at getting a user to a working state starting with a machine that may never have had ns-3 installed. It covers supported platforms, prerequisites, ways to obtain ns-3, ways to build ns-3, and ways to verify your build and run simple programs.

Overview

ns-3 is built as a system of software libraries that work together. User programs can be written that links with (or imports from) these libraries. User programs are written in either the C++ or Python programming languages.

ns-3 is distributed as source code, meaning that the target system needs to have a software development environment to build the libraries first, then build the user program. ns-3 could in principle be distributed as pre-built libraries for selected systems, and in the future it may be distributed that way, but at present, many users actually do their work by editing ns-3 itself, so having the source code around to rebuild the libraries is useful. If someone would like to undertake the job of making pre-built libraries and packages for operating systems, please contact the ns-developers mailing list.

In the following, we’ll look at two ways of downloading and building ns-3. The first is to download and build an official release from the main web site. The second is to fetch and build development copies of ns-3. We’ll walk through both examples since the tools involved are slightly different.

Downloading ns-3

The ns-3 system as a whole is a fairly complex system and has a number of dependencies on other components. Along with the systems you will most likely deal with every day (the GNU toolchain, Mercurial, a text editor) you will need to ensure that a number of additional libraries are present on your system before proceeding. ns-3 provides a wiki page that includes pages with many useful hints and tips. One such page is the “Installation” page, http://www.nsnam.org/wiki/Installation.

The “Prerequisites” section of this wiki page explains which packages are required to support common ns-3 options, and also provides the commands used to install them for common Linux variants. Cygwin users will have to use the Cygwin installer (if you are a Cygwin user, you used it to install Cygwin).

You may want to take this opportunity to explore the ns-3 wiki a bit since there really is a wealth of information there.

From this point forward, we are going to assume that the reader is working in Linux or a Linux emulation environment (Linux, Cygwin, etc.) and has the GNU toolchain installed and verified along with the prerequisites mentioned above. We are also going to assume that you have Mercurial and Waf installed and running on the target system.

The ns-3 code is available in Mercurial repositories on the server http://code.nsnam.org. You can also download a tarball release at http://www.nsnam.org/release/, or you can work with repositories using Mercurial. We recommend using Mercurial unless there’s a good reason not to. See the end of this section for instructions on how to get a tarball release.

The simplest way to get started using Mercurial repositories is to use the ns-3-allinone environment. This is a set of scripts that manages the downloading and building of various subsystems of ns-3 for you. We recommend that you begin your ns-3 work in this environment.

One practice is to create a directory called workspace in one’s home directory under which one can keep local Mercurial repositories. Any directory name will do, but we’ll assume that workspace is used herein (note: repos may also be used in some documentation as an example directory name).

Downloading ns-3 Using a Tarball

A tarball is a particular format of software archive where multiple files are bundled together and the archive possibly compressed. ns-3 software releases are provided via a downloadable tarball. The process for downloading ns-3 via tarball is simple; you just have to pick a release, download it and decompress it.

Let’s assume that you, as a user, wish to build ns-3 in a local directory called workspace. If you adopt the workspace directory approach, you can get a copy of a release by typing the following into your Linux shell (substitute the appropriate version numbers, of course):

$ cd
$ mkdir workspace
$ cd workspace
$ wget http://www.nsnam.org/release/ns-allinone-3.23.tar.bz2
$ tar xjf ns-allinone-3.23.tar.bz2

If you change into the directory ns-allinone-3.23 you should see a number of files:

$ ls
bake      constants.py   ns-3.23               README
build.py  netanim-3.106  pybindgen-0.17.0.886  util.py

You are now ready to build the base ns-3 distribution.

Downloading ns-3 Using Bake

Bake is a tool for distributed integration and building, developed for the ns-3 project.  Bake can be used to fetch development versions of the ns-3 software, and to download and build extensions to the base ns-3 distribution, such as the Direct Code Execution environment, Network Simulation Cradle, ability to create new Python bindings, and others.

In recent ns-3 releases, Bake has been included in the release tarball. The configuration file included in the released version will allow one to download any software that was current at the time of the release. That is, for example, the version of Bake that is distributed with the ns-3.21 release can be used to fetch components for that ns-3 release or earlier, but can’t be used to fetch components for later releases (unless the bakeconf.xml file is updated).

You can also get the most recent copy of bake by typing the following into your Linux shell (assuming you have installed Mercurial):

$ cd
$ mkdir workspace
$ cd workspace
$ hg clone http://code.nsnam.org/bake

As the hg (Mercurial) command executes, you should see something like the following displayed,

...
destination directory: bake
requesting all changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 339 changesets with 796 changes to 63 files
updating to branch default
45 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

After the clone command completes, you should have a directory called bake, the contents of which should look something like the following:

$ ls
bake                  bakeconf.xml  doc       generate-binary.py  TODO
bake.py               examples      test

Notice that you really just downloaded some Python scripts and a Python module called bake. The next step will be to use those scripts to download and build the ns-3 distribution of your choice.

There are a few configuration targets available:

  1. ns-3.23: the module corresponding to the release; it will download components similar to the release tarball.
  2. ns-3-dev: a similar module but using the development code tree
  3. ns-allinone-3.23: the module that includes other optional features such as click routing, openflow for ns-3, and the Network Simulation Cradle
  4. ns-3-allinone: similar to the released version of the allinone module, but for development code.

The current development snapshot (unreleased) of ns-3 may be found at http://code.nsnam.org/ns-3-dev/. The developers attempt to keep these repository in consistent, working states but they are in a development area with unreleased code present, so you may want to consider staying with an official release if you do not need newly- introduced features.

You can find the latest version of the code either by inspection of the repository list or by going to the “ns-3 Releases” web page and clicking on the latest release link. We’ll proceed in this tutorial example with ns-3.23.

We are now going to use the bake tool to pull down the various pieces of ns-3 you will be using. First, we’ll say a word about running bake.

bake works by downloading source packages into a source directory, and installing libraries into a build directory. bake can be run by referencing the binary, but if one chooses to run bake from outside of the directory it was downloaded into, it is advisable to put bake into your path, such as follows (Linux bash shell example). First, change into the ‘bake’ directory, and then set the following environment variables

$ export BAKE_HOME=`pwd`
$ export PATH=$PATH:$BAKE_HOME:$BAKE_HOME/build/bin
$ export PYTHONPATH=$PYTHONPATH:$BAKE_HOME:$BAKE_HOME/build/lib

This will put the bake.py program into the shell’s path, and will allow other programs to find executables and libraries created by bake. Although several bake use cases do not require setting PATH and PYTHONPATH as above, full builds of ns-3-allinone (with the optional packages) typically do.

Step into the workspace directory and type the following into your shell:

$ ./bake.py configure -e ns-3.23

Next, we’l ask bake to check whether we have enough tools to download various components. Type:

$ ./bake.py check

You should see something like the following,

> Python - OK
> GNU C++ compiler - OK
> Mercurial - OK
> CVS - OK
> GIT - OK
> Bazaar - OK
> Tar tool - OK
> Unzip tool - OK
> Unrar tool - is missing
> 7z  data compression utility - OK
> XZ data compression utility - OK
> Make - OK
> cMake - OK
> patch tool - OK
> autoreconf tool - OK

> Path searched for tools: /usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin /usr/lib64/ccache
/usr/local/bin /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/sbin /usr/sbin /sbin
/home/tomh/bin bin

In particular, download tools such as Mercurial, CVS, GIT, and Bazaar are our principal concerns at this point, since they allow us to fetch the code. Please install missing tools at this stage, in the usual way for your system (if you are able to), or contact your system administrator as needed to install these tools.

Next, try to download the software:

$ ./bake.py download

should yield something like:

>> Searching for system dependency pygoocanvas - OK
>> Searching for system dependency python-dev - OK
>> Searching for system dependency pygraphviz - OK
>> Downloading pybindgen-0.17.0.886 - OK
>> Searching for system dependency g++ - OK
>> Searching for system dependency qt4 - OK
>> Downloading netanim-3.106 - OK
>> Downloading ns-3.23 - OK

The above suggests that three sources have been downloaded. Check the source directory now and type ls; one should see:

$ ls
netanim-3.106  ns-3.23  pybindgen-0.17.0.886

You are now ready to build the ns-3 distribution.

Building ns-3

Building with build.py

When working from a released tarball, the first time you build the ns-3 project you can build using a convenience program found in the allinone directory. This program is called build.py. This program will get the project configured for you in the most commonly useful way. However, please note that more advanced configuration and work with ns-3 will typically involve using the native ns-3 build system, Waf, to be introduced later in this tutorial.

If you downloaded using a tarball you should have a directory called something like ns-allinone-3.23 under your ~/workspace directory. Type the following:

$ ./build.py --enable-examples --enable-tests

Because we are working with examples and tests in this tutorial, and because they are not built by default in ns-3, the arguments for build.py tells it to build them for us. The program also defaults to building all available modules. Later, you can build ns-3 without examples and tests, or eliminate the modules that are not necessary for your work, if you wish.

You will see lots of typical compiler output messages displayed as the build script builds the various pieces you downloaded. Eventually you should see the following:

Waf: Leaving directory `/path/to/workspace/ns-allinone-3.23/ns-3.23/build'
'build' finished successfully (6m25.032s)

Modules built:
antenna                   aodv                      applications
bridge                    buildings                 config-store
core                      csma                      csma-layout
dsdv                      dsr                       energy
fd-net-device             flow-monitor              internet
lr-wpan                   lte                       mesh
mobility                  mpi                       netanim (no Python)
network                   nix-vector-routing        olsr
point-to-point            point-to-point-layout     propagation
sixlowpan                 spectrum                  stats
tap-bridge                test (no Python)          topology-read
uan                       virtual-net-device        wave
wifi                      wimax

Modules not built (see ns-3 tutorial for explanation):
brite                     click                     openflow
visualizer

Leaving directory `./ns-3.23'

Regarding the portion about modules not built:

Modules not built (see ns-3 tutorial for explanation):
brite                     click                     openflow
visualizer

This just means that some ns-3 modules that have dependencies on outside libraries may not have been built, or that the configuration specifically asked not to build them. It does not mean that the simulator did not build successfully or that it will provide wrong results for the modules listed as being built.

Building with bake

If you used bake above to fetch source code from project repositories, you may continue to use it to build ns-3. Type

$ ./bake.py build

and you should see something like:

>> Building pybindgen-0.17.0.886 - OK
>> Building netanim-3.106 - OK
>> Building ns-3.23 - OK

Hint: you can also perform both steps, download and build by calling ‘bake.py deploy’.

If there happens to be a failure, please have a look at what the following command tells you; it may give a hint as to a missing dependency:

$ ./bake.py show

This will list out the various dependencies of the packages you are trying to build.

Building with Waf

Up to this point, we have used either the build.py script, or the bake tool, to get started with building ns-3. These tools are useful for building ns-3 and supporting libraries, and they call into the ns-3 directory to call the Waf build tool to do the actual building. Most users quickly transition to using Waf directly to configure and build ns-3. So, to proceed, please change your working directory to the ns-3 directory that you have initially built.

It’s not strictly required at this point, but it will be valuable to take a slight detour and look at how to make changes to the configuration of the project. Probably the most useful configuration change you can make will be to build the optimized version of the code. By default you have configured your project to build the debug version. Let’s tell the project to make an optimized build. To explain to Waf that it should do optimized builds that include the examples and tests, you will need to execute the following commands:

$ ./waf clean
$ ./waf --build-profile=optimized --enable-examples --enable-tests configure

This runs Waf out of the local directory (which is provided as a convenience for you). The first command to clean out the previous build is not typically strictly necessary but is good practice (but see Build Profiles, below); it will remove the previously built libraries and object files found in directory build/. When the project is reconfigured and the build system checks for various dependencies, you should see output that looks similar to the following:

Setting top to                           : .
Setting out to                           : build
Checking for 'gcc' (c compiler)          : /usr/bin/gcc
Checking for cc version                  : 4.2.1
Checking for 'g++' (c++ compiler)        : /usr/bin/g++
Checking boost includes                  : 1_46_1
Checking boost libs                      : ok
Checking for boost linkage               : ok
Checking for click location              : not found
Checking for program pkg-config          : /sw/bin/pkg-config
Checking for 'gtk+-2.0' >= 2.12          : yes
Checking for 'libxml-2.0' >= 2.7         : yes
Checking for type uint128_t              : not found
Checking for type __uint128_t            : yes
Checking high precision implementation   : 128-bit integer (default)
Checking for header stdint.h             : yes
Checking for header inttypes.h           : yes
Checking for header sys/inttypes.h       : not found
Checking for header sys/types.h          : yes
Checking for header sys/stat.h           : yes
Checking for header dirent.h             : yes
Checking for header stdlib.h             : yes
Checking for header signal.h             : yes
Checking for header pthread.h            : yes
Checking for header stdint.h             : yes
Checking for header inttypes.h           : yes
Checking for header sys/inttypes.h       : not found
Checking for library rt                  : not found
Checking for header netpacket/packet.h   : not found
Checking for header sys/ioctl.h          : yes
Checking for header net/if.h             : not found
Checking for header net/ethernet.h       : yes
Checking for header linux/if_tun.h       : not found
Checking for header netpacket/packet.h   : not found
Checking for NSC location                : not found
Checking for 'mpic++'                    : yes
Checking for 'sqlite3'                   : yes
Checking for header linux/if_tun.h       : not found
Checking for program sudo                : /usr/bin/sudo
Checking for program valgrind            : /sw/bin/valgrind
Checking for 'gsl'                       : yes
Checking for compilation flag -Wno-error=deprecated-d... support : ok
Checking for compilation flag -Wno-error=deprecated-d... support : ok
Checking for compilation flag -fstrict-aliasing... support       : ok
Checking for compilation flag -fstrict-aliasing... support       : ok
Checking for compilation flag -Wstrict-aliasing... support       : ok
Checking for compilation flag -Wstrict-aliasing... support       : ok
Checking for program doxygen                                     : /usr/local/bin/doxygen
---- Summary of optional NS-3 features:
Build profile                 : debug
Build directory               : build
Python Bindings               : enabled
BRITE Integration             : not enabled (BRITE not enabled (see option --with-brite))
NS-3 Click Integration        : not enabled (nsclick not enabled (see option --with-nsclick))
GtkConfigStore                : enabled
XmlIo                         : enabled
Threading Primitives          : enabled
Real Time Simulator           : enabled (librt is not available)
Emulated Net Device           : enabled (<netpacket/packet.h> include not detected)
File descriptor NetDevice     : enabled
Tap FdNetDevice               : not enabled (needs linux/if_tun.h)
Emulation FdNetDevice         : not enabled (needs netpacket/packet.h)
PlanetLab FdNetDevice         : not enabled (PlanetLab operating system not detected (see option --force-planetlab))
Network Simulation Cradle     : not enabled (NSC not found (see option --with-nsc))
MPI Support                   : enabled
NS-3 OpenFlow Integration     : not enabled (Required boost libraries not found, missing: system, signals, filesystem)
SQlite stats data output      : enabled
Tap Bridge                    : not enabled (<linux/if_tun.h> include not detected)
PyViz visualizer              : enabled
Use sudo to set suid bit      : not enabled (option --enable-sudo not selected)
Build tests                   : enabled
Build examples                : enabled
GNU Scientific Library (GSL)  : enabled
'configure' finished successfully (1.944s)

Note the last part of the above output. Some ns-3 options are not enabled by default or require support from the underlying system to work properly. For instance, to enable XmlTo, the library libxml-2.0 must be found on the system. If this library were not found, the corresponding ns-3 feature would not be enabled and a message would be displayed. Note further that there is a feature to use the program sudo to set the suid bit of certain programs. This is not enabled by default and so this feature is reported as “not enabled.”

Now go ahead and switch back to the debug build that includes the examples and tests.

$ ./waf clean
$ ./waf --build-profile=debug --enable-examples --enable-tests configure

The build system is now configured and you can build the debug versions of the ns-3 programs by simply typing

$ ./waf

Okay, sorry, I made you build the ns-3 part of the system twice, but now you know how to change the configuration and build optimized code.

The build.py script discussed above supports also the --enable-examples and enable-tests arguments, but in general, does not directly support other waf options; for example, this will not work:

$ ./build.py --disable-python

will result in

build.py: error: no such option: --disable-python

However, the special operator -- can be used to pass additional options through to waf, so instead of the above, the following will work:

$ ./build.py -- --disable-python

as it generates the underlying command ./waf configure --disable-python.

Here are a few more introductory tips about Waf.

Configure vs. Build

Some Waf commands are only meaningful during the configure phase and some commands are valid in the build phase. For example, if you wanted to use the emulation features of ns-3, you might want to enable setting the suid bit using sudo as described above. This turns out to be a configuration-time command, and so you could reconfigure using the following command that also includes the examples and tests.

$ ./waf configure --enable-sudo --enable-examples --enable-tests

If you do this, Waf will have run sudo to change the socket creator programs of the emulation code to run as root.

There are many other configure- and build-time options available in Waf. To explore these options, type:

$ ./waf --help

We’ll use some of the testing-related commands in the next section.

Build Profiles

We already saw how you can configure Waf for debug or optimized builds:

$ ./waf --build-profile=debug

There is also an intermediate build profile, release. -d is a synonym for --build-profile.

By default Waf puts the build artifacts in the build directory. You can specify a different output directory with the --out option, e.g.

$ ./waf configure --out=foo

Combining this with build profiles lets you switch between the different compile options in a clean way:

$ ./waf configure --build-profile=debug --out=build/debug
$ ./waf build
...
$ ./waf configure --build-profile=optimized --out=build/optimized
$ ./waf build
...

This allows you to work with multiple builds rather than always overwriting the last build. When you switch, Waf will only compile what it has to, instead of recompiling everything.

When you do switch build profiles like this, you have to be careful to give the same configuration parameters each time. It may be convenient to define some environment variables to help you avoid mistakes:

$ export NS3CONFIG="--enable-examples --enable-tests"
$ export NS3DEBUG="--build-profile=debug --out=build/debug"
$ export NS3OPT=="--build-profile=optimized --out=build/optimized"

$ ./waf configure $NS3CONFIG $NS3DEBUG
$ ./waf build
...
$ ./waf configure $NS3CONFIG $NS3OPT
$ ./waf build

Compilers

In the examples above, Waf uses the GCC C++ compiler, g++, for building ns-3. However, it’s possible to change the C++ compiler used by Waf by defining the CXX environment variable. For example, to use the Clang C++ compiler, clang++,

$ CXX="clang++" ./waf configure
$ ./waf build

One can also set up Waf to do distributed compilation with distcc in a similar way:

$ CXX="distcc g++" ./waf configure
$ ./waf build

More info on distcc and distributed compilation can be found on it’s project page under Documentation section.

Install

Waf may be used to install libraries in various places on the system. The default location where libraries and executables are built is in the build directory, and because Waf knows the location of these libraries and executables, it is not necessary to install the libraries elsewhere.

If users choose to install things outside of the build directory, users may issue the ./waf install command. By default, the prefix for installation is /usr/local, so ./waf install will install programs into /usr/local/bin, libraries into /usr/local/lib, and headers into /usr/local/include. Superuser privileges are typically needed to install to the default prefix, so the typical command would be sudo ./waf install. When running programs with Waf, Waf will first prefer to use shared libraries in the build directory, then will look for libraries in the library path configured in the local environment. So when installing libraries to the system, it is good practice to check that the intended libraries are being used.

Users may choose to install to a different prefix by passing the --prefix option at configure time, such as:

./waf configure --prefix=/opt/local

If later after the build the user issues the ./waf install command, the prefix /opt/local will be used.

The ./waf clean command should be used prior to reconfiguring the project if Waf will be used to install things at a different prefix.

In summary, it is not necessary to call ./waf install to use ns-3. Most users will not need this command since Waf will pick up the current libraries from the build directory, but some users may find it useful if their use case involves working with programs outside of the ns-3 directory.

One Waf

There is only one Waf script, at the top level of the ns-3 source tree. As you work, you may find yourself spending a lot of time in scratch/, or deep in src/..., and needing to invoke Waf. You could just remember where you are, and invoke Waf like this:

$ ../../../waf ...

but that gets tedious, and error prone, and there are better solutions.

If you have the full ns-3 repository this little gem is a start:

$ cd $(hg root) && ./waf ...

Even better is to define this as a shell function:

$ function waff { cd $(hg root) && ./waf $* ; }

$ waff build

If you only have the tarball, an environment variable can help:

$ export NS3DIR="$PWD"
$ function waff { cd $NS3DIR && ./waf $* ; }

$ cd scratch
$ waff build

It might be tempting in a module directory to add a trivial waf script along the lines of exec ../../waf. Please don’t. It’s confusing to new-comers, and when done poorly it leads to subtle build errors. The solutions above are the way to go.

Testing ns-3

You can run the unit tests of the ns-3 distribution by running the ./test.py -c core script:

$ ./test.py -c core

These tests are run in parallel by Waf. You should eventually see a report saying that

92 of 92 tests passed (92 passed, 0 failed, 0 crashed, 0 valgrind errors)

This is the important message.

You will also see the summary output from Waf and the test runner executing each test, which will actually look something like:

Waf: Entering directory `/path/to/workspace/ns-3-allinone/ns-3-dev/build'
Waf: Leaving directory `/path/to/workspace/ns-3-allinone/ns-3-dev/build'
'build' finished successfully (1.799s)

Modules built:
aodv                      applications              bridge
click                     config-store              core
csma                      csma-layout               dsdv
emu                       energy                    flow-monitor
internet                  lte                       mesh
mobility                  mpi                       netanim
network                   nix-vector-routing        ns3tcp
ns3wifi                   olsr                      openflow
point-to-point            point-to-point-layout     propagation
spectrum                  stats                     tap-bridge
template                  test                      tools
topology-read             uan                       virtual-net-device
visualizer                wifi                      wimax

PASS: TestSuite ns3-wifi-interference
PASS: TestSuite histogram

...

PASS: TestSuite object
PASS: TestSuite random-number-generators
92 of 92 tests passed (92 passed, 0 failed, 0 crashed, 0 valgrind errors)

This command is typically run by users to quickly verify that an ns-3 distribution has built correctly. (Note the order of the PASS: ... lines can vary, which is okay. What’s important is that the summary line at the end report that all tests passed; none failed or crashed.)

Running a Script

We typically run scripts under the control of Waf. This allows the build system to ensure that the shared library paths are set correctly and that the libraries are available at run time. To run a program, simply use the --run option in Waf. Let’s run the ns-3 equivalent of the ubiquitous hello world program by typing the following:

$ ./waf --run hello-simulator

Waf first checks to make sure that the program is built correctly and executes a build if required. Waf then executes the program, which produces the following output.

Hello Simulator

Congratulations! You are now an ns-3 user!

What do I do if I don’t see the output?

If you see Waf messages indicating that the build was completed successfully, but do not see the “Hello Simulator” output, chances are that you have switched your build mode to optimized in the Building with Waf section, but have missed the change back to debug mode. All of the console output used in this tutorial uses a special ns-3 logging component that is useful for printing user messages to the console. Output from this component is automatically disabled when you compile optimized code – it is “optimized out.” If you don’t see the “Hello Simulator” output, type the following:

$ ./waf configure --build-profile=debug --enable-examples --enable-tests

to tell Waf to build the debug versions of the ns-3 programs that includes the examples and tests. You must still build the actual debug version of the code by typing

$ ./waf

Now, if you run the hello-simulator program, you should see the expected output.

Program Arguments

To feed command line arguments to an ns-3 program use this pattern:

$ ./waf --run <ns3-program> --command-template="%s <args>"

Substitute your program name for <ns3-program>, and the arguments for <args>. The --command-template argument to Waf is basically a recipe for constructing the actual command line Waf should use to execute the program. Waf checks that the build is complete, sets the shared library paths, then invokes the executable using the provided command line template, inserting the program name for the %s placeholder. (I admit this is a bit awkward, but that’s the way it is. Patches welcome!)

Another particularly useful example is to run a test suite by itself. Let’s assume that a mytest test suite exists (it doesn’t). Above, we used the ./test.py script to run a whole slew of tests in parallel, by repeatedly invoking the real testing program, test-runner. To invoke test-runner directly for a single test:

$ ./waf --run test-runner --command-template="%s --suite=mytest --verbose"

This passes the arguments to the test-runner program. Since mytest does not exist, an error message will be generated. To print the available test-runner options:

$ ./waf --run test-runner --command-template="%s --help"

Debugging

To run ns-3 programs under the control of another utility, such as a debugger (e.g. gdb) or memory checker (e.g. valgrind), you use a similar --command-template="..." form.

For example, to run your ns-3 program hello-simulator with the arguments <args> under the gdb debugger:

$ ./waf --run=hello-simulator --command-template="gdb %s --args <args>"

Notice that the ns-3 program name goes with the --run argument, and the control utility (here gdb) is the first token in the --commmand-template argument. The --args tells gdb that the remainder of the command line belongs to the “inferior” program. (Some gdb‘s don’t understand the --args feature. In this case, omit the program arguments from the --command-template, and use the gdb command set args.)

We can combine this recipe and the previous one to run a test under the debugger:

$ ./waf --run test-runner --command-template="gdb %s --args --suite=mytest --verbose"

Working Directory

Waf needs to run from its location at the top of the ns-3 tree. This becomes the working directory where output files will be written. But what if you want to keep those ouf to the ns-3 source tree? Use the --cwd argument:

$ ./waf --cwd=...

It may be more convenient to start with your working directory where you want the output files, in which case a little indirection can help:

$ function waff {
    CWD="$PWD"
    cd $NS3DIR >/dev/null
    ./waf --cwd="$CWD" $*
    cd - >/dev/null
  }

This embellishment of the previous version saves the current working directory, cd‘s to the Waf directory, then instructs Waf to change the working directory back to the saved current working directory before running the program.