xacro_live

Tool to update the robot_description dynamically from updates on a target xacro file.

How it works

To start tracking a xacro file and its children, simply run:

ros2 run xacro_live xacro_live path/to/target.xacro

Then, whenever you modify any of the files of the urdf tree, a request to change the robot_description param is sent to robot_state_publisher node.

IMPORTANT NOTE: To track the files in the source folder, you must run colcon build with the --symlink-install flag, otherwise it will track the files installed.

The package also provides the helper launch file xacro_live_view.launch:

ros2 launch xacro_live xacro_live_view.launch.py xacro_file:="path/to/target.xacro"

It runs xacro_live, robot_state_publisher, joint_state_publisher_gui, and rviz2, so the user can see the updates happening while editing the robot description files (it is up to the user to open the xacro files with its favourite editor).

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