rqt_dotgraph

Provides a ROS2 node and an rqt plugin for visualizing DOT graph files. You can either load a DOT file or subscribe to a ROS2 topic.

To visualize the DOT graphs, this module includes a version of xdot_qt.py forked from ROSPlan and released under LGPLv3. The forked version in this package has been modified and the changes to it are released under the LGPLv3. The rest of this package is released under the CC0 license.

Nodes

rqt_dotgraph

Subscriptions

dot_graph (std_msgs/String)

• String containing the dot graph itself (e.g. the contents of a DOT file).

Parameters

~title (string, default: Dot Graph Viewer)

• Window title.

Troubleshooting

Plugin File Not Found

rqt plugins can have issues running. This has occurred most often after updating graphics drivers. A typical error message is the following.

RosPluginProvider._parse_plugin_xml() plugin file "/home/user/ws/install/rqt_dotgraph/share/rqt_dotgraph/plugin.xml" in package "rqt_dotgraph" not found

The fix is to run the following command then continue with previous commands where the error occurred.

ros2 run rqt_dotgraph rqt_dotgraph --force-discover

Import Errors when Running

When running the node with

ros2 run rqt_dotgraph rqt_dotgraph

and this error occurs

ImportError: cannot import name 'QVariant' from 'PySide2.QtCore' (/home/thomas/src/rqt_dotgraph/venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/PySide2/QtCore.abi3.so)

Fix it with

pip install PyQt5

If this error occurs

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'PySide2'

Fix it with

pip install PySide2

Changelog for package rqt_dotgraph

0.0.2 (2024-03-08)

• Contributors: Alexander Xydes, Thomas Denewiler

Added

• Troubleshooting:
  • Tips for some runtime crashes due to missing dependencies. (#13)
  • Details about fixing plugin file not found error. (#9)
• Run actions on a schedule or [workflow_dispatch]{.title-ref} as well as pull request and push. (#10)
• Update actions used in workflows. (#14)
• Update CI to use newer versions of actions and test on multiple ROS distributions. (#12)
• Update list of maintainers. (#18)

Fixed

• Add PySide2 and PyQt5 dependencies to package.xml. (#16)
• Switch from hyphen to underscore in setup.cfg to avoid deprecated Python variables. (#11)
• Explicitly specifying file encoding when opening a file with Python. Fixes pylint warning (Statick). (#6)

Removed

• Remove version pinning for pycodestyle in workflow. (#15)

0.0.1 (2021-05-17)

• Initial release of a ROS2 node and an rqt plugin for visualizing dot graph files.
• Contributors: Alexander Xydes

Added

• Github actions workflow to test and lint the package.
• Automatically zooming to fit dotgraph only the first time a graph is received on a topic. Zooming to fit upon loading dotgraph file.

Fixed

• Properly destroying old subscription.