Building ROS 2 on OS X¶

System requirements¶

We support OS X 10.12.x.

However, some new versions like 10.13.x and some older versions like 10.11.x and 10.10.x are known to work as well.

Install prerequisites¶

You need the following things installed to build ROS 2:

1. Xcode

   • If you don’t already have it installed, install Xcode and the Command Line Tools:

     xcode-select --install
     

2. brew (needed to install more stuff; you probably already have this):

   • Follow installation instructions at http://brew.sh/

   • Optional: Check that brew is happy with your system configuration by running:

     brew doctor
     

     Fix any problems that it identifies.

3. Use brew to install more stuff:

   brew install cmake cppcheck eigen pcre poco python3 tinyxml wget
   
   # install dependencies for Fast-RTPS if you are using it
   brew install asio tinyxml2
   
   brew install opencv
   
   # install dependencies for rcl_logging_log4cxx
   brew install log4cxx
   

4. Install rviz dependencies

   # install dependencies for Rviz
   brew install qt freetype assimp
   
   # Add the Qt directory to the PATH and CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH
   export CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH:/usr/local/opt/qt
   export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/opt/qt/bin
   

5. Use python3 -m pip (just pip may install Python3 or Python2) to install more stuff:

   python3 -m pip install argcomplete catkin_pkg colcon-common-extensions coverage empy flake8 flake8-blind-except flake8-builtins flake8-class-newline flake8-comprehensions flake8-deprecated flake8-docstrings flake8-import-order flake8-quotes lark-parser mock nose pep8 pydocstyle pyparsing setuptools vcstool
   

6. Optional: if you want to build the ROS 1<->2 bridge, then you must also install ROS 1:

   • Start with the normal install instructions: http://wiki.ros.org/kinetic/Installation/OSX/Homebrew/Source

   • When you get to the step where you call rosinstall_generator to get the source code, here’s an alternate invocation that brings in just the minimum required to produce a useful bridge:

     rosinstall_generator catkin common_msgs roscpp rosmsg --rosdistro kinetic --deps --wet-only --tar > kinetic-ros2-bridge-deps.rosinstall
     wstool init -j8 src kinetic-ros2-bridge-deps.rosinstall
     

     Otherwise, just follow the normal instructions, then source the resulting install_isolated/setup.bash before proceeding here to build ROS 2.

Disable System Integrity Protection (SIP)¶

OS X versions >=10.11 have System Integrity Protection enabled by default. So that SIP doesn’t prevent processes from inheriting dynamic linker environment variables, such as DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, you’ll need to disable it following these instructions.

Get the ROS 2 code¶

Create a workspace and clone all repos:

mkdir -p ~/ros2_ws/src
cd ~/ros2_ws
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros2/ros2/release-latest/ros2.repos
vcs import src < ros2.repos

Install additional DDS vendors (optional)¶

ROS 2 builds on top of DDS. It is compatible with multiple DDS or RTPS (the DDS wire protocol) vendors. The repositories you downloaded for ROS 2 includes eProsima’s Fast RTPS, which is the only bundled vendor. If you would like to use one of the other vendors you will need to install their software separately before building. The ROS 2 build will automatically build support for vendors that have been installed and sourced correctly.

By default we include eProsima’s FastRTPS in the workspace and it is the default middleware. Detailed instructions for installing other DDS vendors are provided in the “Alternative DDS sources” section below.

Build the ROS 2 code¶

Note: if you are trying to build the ROS 1 <-> ROS 2 bridge, follow instead these modified instructions.

Run the colcon tool to build everything (more on using colcon in this tutorial):

cd ~/ros2_ws/
colcon build --symlink-install

Try some examples¶

In a clean new terminal, source the setup file (this will automatically set up the environment for any DDS vendors that support was built for) and then run a talker:

. ~/ros2_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

In another terminal source the setup file and then run a listener:

. ~/ros2_ws/install/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp listener

You should see the talker saying that it’s Publishing messages and the listener saying I heard those messages. Hooray!

Alternative DDS sources¶

The demos will attempt to build against any detected DDS vendor. The only bundled vendor is eProsima’s Fast RTPS, which is included in the default set of sources for ROS 2. If you would like to switch out the vendor below are the instructions. When you run the build make sure that your chosen DDS vendor(s) are exposed in your environment.

When multiple vendors are present, you can choose the used RMW implementation by setting the the environment variable RMW_IMPLEMENTATION to the package providing the RMW implementation. See Working with multiple RMW implementations for more details.

source <path_to_opensplice>/x86_64.darwin10_clang/release.com

# macOS 10.12 Sierra
source /Applications/rti_connext_dds-5.3.1/resource/scripts/rtisetenv_x64Darwin16clang8.0.bash
# macOS 10.13 High Sierra
source /Applications/rti_connext_dds-5.3.1/resource/scripts/rtisetenv_x64Darwin17clang9.0.bash

Troubleshooting¶

ImportError: dlopen(.../ros2_install/ros2-osx/lib/python3.7/site-packages/rclpy/_rclpy.cpython-37m-darwin.so, 2): Library not loaded: @rpath/librcl_interfaces__rosidl_typesupport_c.dylib
  Referenced from: .../ros2_install/ros2-osx/lib/python3.7/site-packages/rclpy/_rclpy.cpython-37m-darwin.so
  Reason: image not found

In file included from /usr/local/opt/qt/lib/QtGui.framework/Headers/qguiapplication.h:46:
/usr/local/opt/qt/lib/QtGui.framework/Headers/qinputmethod.h:87:5: error:
      unknown type name 'Q_ENUM'
    Q_ENUM(Action)
    ^

dyld: Symbol not found: __cg_jpeg_resync_to_restart
  Referenced from: /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/ImageIO
  Expected in: /usr/local/lib/libJPEG.dylib
 in /System/Library/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/A/ImageIO
/bin/sh: line 1: 25274 Trace/BPT trap: 5       /usr/local/bin/cmake

$ brew unlink libpng libtiff libjpeg

$ sudo install_name_tool -change /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.8.dylib /usr/local/opt/jpeg/lib/libjpeg.8.dylib /usr/local/lib/libopencv_highgui.2.4.dylib
$ sudo install_name_tool -change /usr/local/lib/libpng16.16.dylib /usr/local/opt/libpng/lib/libpng16.16.dylib /usr/local/lib/libopencv_highgui.2.4.dylib
$ sudo install_name_tool -change /usr/local/lib/libtiff.5.dylib /usr/local/opt/libtiff/lib/libtiff.5.dylib /usr/local/lib/libopencv_highgui.2.4.dylib
$ sudo install_name_tool -change /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.8.dylib /usr/local/opt/jpeg/lib/libjpeg.8.dylib /usr/local/Cellar/libtiff/4.0.4/lib/libtiff.5.dylib