Installing ROS 2 on Windows¶

Install Chocolatey¶

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows, install it by following their installation instructions:

https://chocolatey.org/

You’ll use Chocolatey to install some other developer tools.

Install Python¶

Open a Command Prompt and type the following to install Python via Chocolatey:

> choco install -y python --version 3.7.5

Install Visual C++ Redistributables¶

Open a Command Prompt and type the following to install them via Chocolatey:

> choco install -y vcredist2013 vcredist140

Install OpenSSL¶

Download an OpenSSL installer from this page. Scroll to the bottom of the page and download Win64 OpenSSL v1.0.2. Don’t download the Win32 or Light versions.

Run the installer with default parameters. The following commands assume you used the default installation directory:

• setx -m OPENSSL_CONF C:\OpenSSL-Win64\bin\openssl.cfg

You will need to append the OpenSSL-Win64 bin folder to your PATH. You can do this by clicking the Windows icon, typing “Environment Variables”, then clicking on “Edit the system environment variables”. In the resulting dialog, click “Environment Variables”, then click “Path” on the bottom pane, finally click “Edit” and add the path below.

• C:\OpenSSL-Win64\bin\

Install Visual Studio¶

Install Visual Studio 2019.

If you already have a paid version of Visual Studio 2019 (Professional, Enterprise), skip this step.

Microsoft provides a free of charge version of Visual Studio 2019, named Community, which can be used to build applications that use ROS 2:

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads/

Make sure that the Visual C++ features are installed.

An easy way to make sure they’re installed is to select the Desktop development with C++ workflow during the install.

Make sure that no C++ CMake tools are installed by unselecting them in the list of components to be installed.

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.

Install OpenCV¶

Some of the examples require OpenCV to be installed.

You can download a precompiled version of OpenCV 3.4.6 from https://github.com/ros2/ros2/releases/download/opencv-archives/opencv-3.4.6-vc16.VS2019.zip .

Assuming you unpacked it to C:\opencv, type the following on a Command Prompt (requires Admin privileges):

setx -m OpenCV_DIR C:\opencv

Since you are using a precompiled ROS version, we have to tell it where to find the OpenCV libraries. You have to extend the PATH variable to C:\opencv\x64\vc16\bin.

Install dependencies¶

There are a few dependencies not available in the Chocolatey package database. In order to ease the manual installation process, we provide the necessary Chocolatey packages.

As some chocolatey packages rely on it, we start by installing CMake

> choco install -y cmake

You will need to append the CMake bin folder C:\Program Files\CMake\bin to your PATH.

Please download these packages from this GitHub repository.

• asio.1.12.1.nupkg

• cunit.2.1.3.nupkg

• eigen-3.3.4.nupkg

• tinyxml-usestl.2.6.2.nupkg

• tinyxml2.6.0.0.nupkg

• log4cxx.0.10.0.nupkg

Once these packages are downloaded, open an administrative shell and execute the following command:

> choco install -y -s <PATH\TO\DOWNLOADS\> asio cunit eigen tinyxml-usestl tinyxml2 log4cxx

Please replace <PATH\TO\DOWNLOADS> with the folder you downloaded the packages to.

You must also install some python dependencies for command-line tools:

python -m pip install -U catkin_pkg cryptography empy ifcfg lark-parser lxml netifaces numpy opencv-python pyparsing pyyaml setuptools

python -m pip install -U pydot PyQt5