ROS Melodic guidelines

Base project docker image with ros melodic full distribution and a sample package.

CI

CI relies on two Github Action packages that essentially configure the ROS Melodic environment to build and test the packages. If extra dependencies are required which cannot be handled by rosdep you must perform the custom installation steps before the execution of action-ros-ci.

Docker

Prerequisites

It is a requirement to have docker engine already installed in the host machine.

• See Docker Installation Guide

For NVIDIA GPU support, nvidia-container-toolkit should be installed. Skip this step if you don't have an NVIDIA graphics card

• Make sure you have the drivers installed:

  nvidia-smi

• See NVIDIA Container Toolkit Installation Guide

Building image and running container

• Build the docker image whose name is ros_melodic:

./docker/build.sh

You can also try to set a specific image name:

./docker/build.sh -i my_fancy_image_name

• Run a docker container from ros_melodic called ros_melodic_container:

./docker/run.sh

• IMPORTANT: If you are using nvidia drivers add the --use_nvidia flag:

./docker/run.sh --use_nvidia

You can also try to set specific image and container names:

./docker/run.sh -i my_fancy_image_name -c my_fancy_container_name

And a prompt in the docker image should appear at the root of the workspace:

$ pwd
/home/username/ws
$ ls -lash src/
total 12K
4.0K drwxr-xr-x 3 root         root         4.0K Nov 25 20:53 .
4.0K drwxr-xr-x 1 root         root         4.0K Nov 25 20:53 ..
4.0K drwxrwxr-x 4 agalbachicar agalbachicar 4.0K Nov 25 19:20 ekuabc

Note that the repository is mounted into a workspace. That is convenient if you are working in a single repository project. Note that for multi-repository workspace you should use another tool like vcs-tool to control via a .repos file the repositories in your workspace.

Prepare your workspace, build and test

• First of all, sync your submodules to bring the Noah bot repository running:

git submodule update --init --recursive

• To install dependencies via rosdep:

rosdep install -i -y --rosdistro melodic --from-paths src

• To build:

catkin_make

• To test:

catkin_make run_tests

Try the code!

This is based on the pub-sub Python tutorial and the pub-sub C++ tutorial so consider looking at the specific instructions in the page for all the details.

Once you have finished building and testing your workspace, make sure you try it.

• Open tmux:

tmux

• Open two panes by sequentially pressing Ctrl-b and then ".

• Source your development space:

source devel/setup.bash

• In one pane run:

rosrun py_pubsub talker

Alternatively you could try the C++ talker by doing:

rosrun cpp_pubsub talker

• And in the other (you can switch between panes by sequentially pressing Ctrl-b and the up and down arrow keys):

rosrun py_pubsub listener

Alternatively you could try the C++ listener by doing:

rosrun cpp_pubsub listener

You should see that in the talker pane you get logs every time a message is sent with an increasing counter and in the listener pane you get the sent message right after it was logged in the other one.

You can stop each node by pressing Ctrl-c and then exit each tmux pane by exiting the terminal session. You should return to the initial bash session in the container.

Running Noah bot simulation

After having built the repository, you can try launching Noah!

• Run:

source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch noah_bot_launcher noah_navigationless.launch