Installing ROS 2 on OS X¶

Table of Contents

System requirements
Installing prerequisites
Disable System Integrity Protection (SIP)
Downloading ROS 2
Install additional DDS implementations (optional)
- Enable OpenSplice support
- Enable Connext support
Set up the ROS 2 environment
Try some examples
Build your own packages

This page explains how to install ROS 2 on OS X from a pre-built binary package.

Installing prerequisites ¶

You need the following things installed before installing ROS 2.

brew (needed to install more stuff; you probably already have this):
- Follow installation instructions at http://brew.sh/
- Optional: Check that brew is happy with your system configuration by running:
```
  brew doctor


Fix any problems that it identifies.
```

Use brew to install more stuff:

brew install python3

# install asio and tinyxml2 for Fast-RTPS
brew install asio tinyxml2

# install dependencies for robot state publisher
brew install tinyxml eigen pcre poco

# OpenCV isn't a dependency of ROS 2, but it is used by some demos.
brew install opencv

# install OpenSSL for DDS-Security
brew install openssl
# if you are using ZSH, then replace '.bashrc' with '.zshrc'
echo "export OPENSSL_ROOT_DIR=$(brew --prefix openssl)" >> ~/.bashrc

# install Qt for RViz
brew install qt freetype assimp

# install console_bridge for rosbag2
brew install console_bridge

# install dependencies for rcl_logging_log4cxx
brew install log4cxx

Install rqt dependencies

brew install sip pyqt5

Fix some path names when looking for sip stuff during install (see ROS 1 wiki):

ln -s /usr/local/share/sip/Qt5 /usr/local/share/sip/PyQt5

brew install graphviz

python3 -m pip install pygraphviz pydot
Note

You may run into an issue installing pygraphviz, “error: Error locating graphviz”. Try the following install command instead:
```
python3 -m pip install --install-option="--include-path=/usr/local/include/" --install-option="--library-path=/usr/local/lib/" pygraphviz
```
Install SROS2 dependencies

python3 -m pip install lxml

Install additional runtime dependencies for command-line tools:

python3 -m pip install catkin_pkg empy lark-parser lxml numpy pyparsing pyyaml setuptools argcomplete

Disable System Integrity Protection (SIP)¶

OS X versions >=10.11 have System Integrity Protection enabled by default. So that SIP doesn’t prevent processes from inheriting dynamic linker environment variables, such as DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, you’ll need to disable it following these instructions.

Downloading ROS 2 ¶

Go to the releases page: https://github.com/ros2/ros2/releases
Download the latest package for OS X; let’s assume that it ends up at ~/Downloads/ros2-release-distro-date-macos-amd64.tar.bz2.
- Note: there may be more than one binary download option which might cause the file name to differ.

Unpack it:

mkdir -p ~/ros2_install
cd ~/ros2_install
tar xf ~/Downloads/ros2-release-distro-date-macos-amd64.tar.bz2

Install additional DDS implementations (optional)¶

ROS 2 builds on top of DDS. It is compatible with multiple DDS or RTPS (the DDS wire protocol) vendors.

The package you downloaded has been built with optional support for three vendors. Run-time support for eProsima’s Fast RTPS is included bundled by default. If you would like to use one of the other vendors you will need to install their software separately.

Enable OpenSplice support ¶

Download the latest release from https://github.com/ADLINK-IST/opensplice/releases and unpack it. For ROS 2 releases up to and including Ardent, do not do anything else at this point. For ROS 2 releases later than Ardent, set the OSPL_HOME environment variable to the unpacked directory that contains the release.com script.

Enable Connext support ¶

To use RTI Connext DDS there are options available for university, purchase or evaluation

After installing, run RTI launcher and point it to your license file.

Set the NDDSHOME environment variable:

export NDDSHOME=/Applications/rti_connext_dds-5.3.1

You may need to increase shared memory resources following https://community.rti.com/kb/osx510.

If you want to install the Connext DDS-Security plugins please refer to this page.

Set up the ROS 2 environment ¶

Source the ROS 2 setup file:

. ~/ros2_install/ros2-osx/setup.bash

For ROS 2 releases up to and including Ardent, if you downloaded a release with OpenSplice support you must additionally source the OpenSplice setup file manually (this is done automatically for ROS 2 releases later than Ardent). Only do this after you have sourced the ROS 2 one:

. <path_to_opensplice>/x86_64.darwin10_clang/release.com

Try some examples ¶

In one terminal, set up the ROS 2 environment as described above and then run a talker:

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

In another terminal, set up the ROS 2 environment and then run a listener:

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp listener

You should see the talker saying that it’s Publishing messages and the listener saying I heard those messages. Hooray!

If you have installed support for an optional vendor, see this page for details on how to use that vendor.

If you run into issues, see the troubleshooting section on the source installation page.

Build your own packages ¶

If you would like to build your own packages, refer to the tutorial "Using Colcon to build packages".