Easy ROS melodic container

About

These scripts are there for easy building and running a ROS melodic container with OpenGL support. You can use your favorite tools like RViZ or Gazebo from this container seamlessly.

Prerequisites

To be able to use this stuff, you need to have several things set up:

1. Dedicated Nvidia GPU (the only supported option for now).
2. Ubuntu 18.04+ or Debian 9+
3. Properly installed drivers for the GPU
4. Properly installed Docker
5. Properly installed nvidia-docker (the package name is nvidia-docker2. Don't forget tor restart the docker service after installation)
6. A python3 executable (only standard library is required).

Also make sure you've added your user to the docker group.

Windows

Hopefully, it is possible to run these scripts in Windows (maybe some minor changes needed). You also need an X-server to be installed (don't forget to run it).

Warning

The project was tested in Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 only. Sorry for that. In this (and in every other) regard contributions are strongly encouraged.

Usage

Again, please, make sure your current user is in the docker group.

1. Build the container

You can build the container by using these commands.

chmod +x build.py
./build.py

Or simply put python3 build.py.

The build.py script has one optional positional argument: image_name. It is simply the name of the image to be created. The default image name is: ros_melodic.

The build.py script will save the image name in use to a .build.meta file in JSON format. This is done to let the other script, namely run.py to be used without user-provided arguments (by default, run.py will extract the image name from the .build.meta file).

After building you get an image with ros-melodic-desktop-full and ros-melodic-moveit packages installed. Also some other basic developer tools are installed. The container has a ROS workspace /root/melo_ws with moveit_tutorials and panda_moveit_config prebuilt packages.

2. Run the container

To run the built image, simply put:

chmod +x run.py
./run.py

Or similarly, python3 run.py. The run.py script has several command-line options. They are described below.

-n, --image_name

Name of the built Docker image. By default the name used in the build.py command will be loaded (from .build.meta file mentioned above). Feel free to provide any image name you think is appropriate by using this option.

-i, --container_id

The container ID, i.e. a name to attach to the container on run. The default name is: ros_melodic1.

Be careful, if there exists a container with the same name, the script will issue a error. You need to stop the old container and rm it, otherwise consider using -s flag (described below) or provide other container_id to avoid name collisions.

-m --mount path1 [path2 [...]]

Path(s) to be mounted in the container. By default, only the upper-level parent directory of the run.py script is mounted. However you can provide your own path (or several paths, separated by a whitespace), either absolute or relative. All the paths provided will be mounted into the /root/<leaf_directory_name_of_the_path> folder.

-s --stop_rm

Try to stop and remove a container with the same container_id, that provided to the script. If there is no container with that id, the script will issue couple of errors, but eventually will finish its job, so just ignore those.

3. Start working with the container

From the terminal run docker attach <container_id> (the default container id is ros_melodic1). After that run source /root/setup.sh to set up the ROS environment. And then you can spawn terminals and work with ROS. To spawn a terminal, simply put: xterm &. The spawned terminals will inherit the host terminal environment, so there is no need to run /root/setup.sh in any of them.

The install_dependencies.py script

The script can be used from Ubuntu 18.04 system and is used by the docker during the building procedure (from within a container).

So, normally you will not use this script, as it is used automatically. But if you want to install the ROS system-wide on your machine (together with some other useful stuff) - you are welcome.

It installs dependencies as well as some basic developer tools, optionally sets up ROS repository, key and workspace.

The arguments of this script are listed below.

-e --elevate

This argument is almost always needed if you use this script by hand. It provides your permission to use sudo (to install packages with apt, system-wide). Do not use this flag if you are root.

-r --ros_init

Use this argument to set up ros repository and key.

-w --create_ws

Use this argument to create a ROS workspace /root/melo_ws with moveit tutorials prebuilt.

Troubleshooting

Please, create an issue. I will try to respond to it ASAP.