roboplan-ros

ROS 2 wrappers for the roboplan package.

Development Setup

The upstream roboplan package is included as a submodule, be sure to clone it recursively, as it also has submodules.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/open-planning/roboplan-ros

Pixi Development

ROS and the required dependencies are bundled together with pixi and robostack. Different versions of ROS (humble, jazzy, and kilted) are supported with pixi environments. The build relies on the pixi-build-ros backend to manage ROS dependencies from the workspace.

For instance, to build for kilted:

# Setup the environment
pixi run -e kilted setup-colcon

# Build
pixi run -e kilted build

# Run tests, must manually run build prior to executing
pixi run -e kilted test

# Show tests results
pixi run -e kilted test-result

Once the workspace is built, it can be used as a “normal” ROS 2 workspace. That is, the workspace can be sourced and used as expected. However, not that the build/install directories are broken out by ROS distribution, so those arguments MUST be included when compiling.

# Activate the kilted environment
pixi shell -e kilted

# Build with the existing install dirs
colcon build

# Source it
source install/setup.bash

# Or test,
colcon test

The examples from the upstream repository should now be available, as well,

python3 roboplan/roboplan_examples/python/example_scene.py

[!IMPORTANT] All ROS distros will share build/install directories by default. Be sure to clear them out when switching between ROS versions or things will break.

[!NOTE] The pixi-build-ros backend requires that all package.xml files be reference in the [dev] block of the pixi.toml file. This is a slight annoyance due to the submodules, but many of those packages can and will be installed from Conda once RoboPlan is more stable.

Docker Development

A Docker Compose workflow is also provided by the compose specification.

To build and run,

# Build the image, defaults to jazzy but can be overridden by setting $ROS_DISTRO
docker compose build ros

# Start the container
docker compose up ros

# Attach to the running container
docker compose exec ros bash

This will drop the user into a pre-compiled colcon workspace with the source mounted in the image.