Installing ROS 2 on OS X¶

System requirements¶

We support OS X Sierra (10.12.x).

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 CUnit for CycloneDDS
  brew install cunit
  

• 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_dashing
  cd ~/ros2_dashing
  tar xf ~/Downloads/ros2-release-distro-date-macos-amd64.tar.bz2
  

Install additional DDS implementations (optional)¶

If you would like to use another DDS or RTPS vendor besides the default, eProsima’s Fast RTPS, you can find instructions here.

Environment setup¶

Source the ROS 2 setup file:

. ~/ros2_dashing/ros2-osx/setup.bash

Try some examples¶

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

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

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

ros2 run demo_nodes_py listener

You should see the talker saying that it’s Publishing messages and the listener saying I heard those messages. This verifies both the C++ and Python APIs are working properly. Hooray!

See the tutorials and demos for other things to try.

Build your own packages¶

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

Troubleshooting¶

Troubleshooting techniques can be found here.

Uninstall¶

1. If you installed your workspace with colcon as instructed above, “uninstalling” could be just a matter of opening a new terminal and not sourcing the workspace’s setup file. This way, your environment will behave as though there is no Dashing install on your system.

2. If you’re also trying to free up space, you can delete the entire workspace directory with:

   rm -rf ~/ros2_dashing