Installing ROS2 via Debian Packages¶

Table of Contents

Resources
Setup Locale
Setup Sources
Install ROS 2 packages
Environment setup
- (optional) Install argcomplete
- Sourcing the setup script
Install additional RMW implementations
Install additional packages using ROS 1 packages
Build your own packages

Debian packages for ROS 2 Dashing Diademata are available for Ubuntu Bionic.

Resources ¶

Status Page:
- ROS 2 Dashing (Ubuntu Bionic): amd64, arm64
Jenkins Instance
Repositories

Make sure you have a locale which supports UTF-8. If you are in a minimal environment, such as a docker container, the locale may be something minimal like POSIX. We test with the following settings. It should be fine if you’re using a different UTF-8 supported locale.

sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Setup Sources ¶

To install the Debian packages you will need to add our Debian repository to your apt sources. First you will need to authorize our gpg key with apt like this:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl gnupg2 lsb-release
curl http://repo.ros2.org/repos.key | sudo apt-key add -

And then add the repository to your sources list:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=amd64,arm64] http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros2-latest.list'

Install ROS 2 packages ¶

Update your apt repository caches after setting up the repositories.

sudo apt update

Desktop Install (Recommended): ROS, RViz, demos, tutorials.

sudo apt install ros-dashing-desktop

ROS-Base Install (Bare Bones): Communication libraries, message packages, command line tools. No GUI tools.

sudo apt install ros-dashing-ros-base

See specific sections below for how to also install the ros1_bridge, TurtleBot packages, or alternative RMW packages.

Environment setup ¶

(optional) Install argcomplete ¶

ROS 2 command line tools use argcomplete to autocompletion. So if you want autocompletion, installing argcomplete is necessary.

sudo apt install python3-argcomplete

Sourcing the setup script ¶

Set up your environment by sourcing the following file.

source /opt/ros/dashing/setup.bash

You may want to add this to your .bashrc.

echo "source /opt/ros/dashing/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

Install additional RMW implementations ¶

By default the RMW implementation FastRTPS is used. If using Ardent OpenSplice is also installed.

To install support for OpenSplice or RTI Connext on Bouncy:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install ros-dashing-rmw-opensplice-cpp # for OpenSplice
sudo apt install ros-dashing-rmw-connext-cpp # for RTI Connext (requires license agreement)

By setting the environment variable RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_opensplice_cpp you can switch to use OpenSplice instead. For ROS 2 releases Bouncy and newer, RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_connext_cpp can also be selected to use RTI Connext.

If you want to install the Connext DDS-Security plugins please refer to this page.

Install additional packages using ROS 1 packages ¶

The ros1_bridge as well as the TurtleBot demos are using ROS 1 packages. To be able to install them please start by adding the ROS 1 sources as documented here.

If you’re using Docker for isolation you can start with the image ros:melodic or osrf/ros:melodic-desktop (or Kinetic if using Ardent). This will also avoid the need to setup the ROS sources as they will already be integrated.

Now you can install the remaining packages:

. code-block:: bash

sudo apt update sudo apt install ros-dashing-ros1-bridge

The turtlebot2 packages are not currently available in Dashing.

Build your own packages ¶

If you would like to build your own packages, refer to the tutorial "Using Colcon to build packages".