ROS 2 Template Workspace

Want to start developing a new ROS 2 feature or application? Clone this and get going.

Prerequisites

1. Docker
2. Python workflow prerequisites (install with pip or uv, etc):

• vcs2l
• rocker
• off-your-rocker

1. Recommended: just

Usage

All workflows can be invoked from tools/ scripts directly, or via convenience wrappers with just. See just -l for a list with comments on the commands.

• Edit ws.repos to contain repositories relevant to development.

• Build your dev environment and start it:

mkdir src
vcs import src < ws.repos
DEVIMG=my-img ./tools/build-ws --build-arg ROS_DISTRO=rolling --build-arg UBUNTU_DISTRO=noble
DEVIMG=my-img ./tools/start-ws

In the container (basic ROS dev workflow):

colcon build

To start a new shell in the running container,

DEVIMG=my-img ./tools/attach

Also, to avoid full reinstall of all dependencies, you can do an incremental rosdep installation of only new dependencies as a new layer on top of the prebuilt image:

DEVIMG=my-img ./tools/incremental-ws

Repos Files

For convenience working on ROS 2 core on live distributions, various .repos files are provided here in repos/. They are not meant to be combined - each is a standalone copy from https://github.com/ros2/ros2 ros2.repos at the relevant branch. I wouldn't trust these too much to be all the way up to date - again, they are merely a convenience for core development.