foxglove_sdk_vendor

ROS 2 vendor package that downloads the prebuilt Foxglove SDK release artifacts and installs the headers plus libfoxglove.a static library into the workspace. It follows the upstream installation guidance that recommends fetching the appropriate archive for your target platform and linking the C++ wrapper in your own build.

Currently the package pulls Foxglove SDK v0.15.1 for Linux hosts (x86_64 or aarch64). The archive is vendored under vendor/ (see below) and verified via the SHA256 value published on the GitHub release page, and extracted into the build tree before being installed to install/.

Using the vendor package

find_package(foxglove_sdk_vendor REQUIRED)

add_executable(example_node src/example_node.cpp)
target_link_libraries(example_node
  PRIVATE foxglove_sdk_vendor::foxglove_sdk
)

The config exported by ament_package() also sets foxglove_sdk_vendor_INCLUDE_DIRS / foxglove_sdk_vendor_LIBRARIES so you may use those variables directly if you prefer.

Updating the bundled SDK

1. Pick the desired SDK release from the Foxglove SDK docs or the GitHub releases page.
2. Update FOXGLOVE_SDK_VERSION, URLs, and SHA256 values in CMakeLists.txt.
3. Rebuild the workspace so the new archive is downloaded and installed.

If you need support for an additional platform, extend the processor detection logic in CMakeLists.txt with the new archive name and checksum.

Vendored archives and offline builds

ROS 2 release builds typically forbid downloading external artifacts. To keep those builds reproducible, the vendor/ directory already contains the Foxglove SDK archives for x86_64 and aarch64 Linux. At configure time the package prefers those archives. If you delete them (or if you want to work with a different version) either:

1. Place the matching foxglove-<version>-cpp-<platform>.zip into vendor/, or
2. Configure with -DFOXGLOVE_SDK_VENDOR_ALLOW_DOWNLOAD=ON so CMake can fetch the archive directly from the GitHub release you specify in CMakeLists.txt.

Downloads are enabled by default for developer convenience, but the CMake option makes it easy to enforce the no-network policy in CI/release pipelines.

License

The vendor glue code is MIT licensed. The Foxglove SDK binaries that are downloaded at build time remain under the upstream MIT license published by Foxglove.