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ros-direnv

Manage ROS workspace environment via direnv.

Do you always forget to source install/local_setup.bash? Do you hate switching to another terminal for running colcon? This project does it for you. It relies on direnv, which automatically sets the environment based on the .envrc file in the current or upper directory.

Getting started

  1. Install direnv and hook it into your shell.

  2. Clone/download this project to, say ~/ros-direnv (or install it as shown below).

  3. Go to your ROS 2 workspace and setup ros-direnv there:

    cd my-ros-workspace
~/ros-direnv/ros-direnv-setup

    This does the following:

    • Installs the direnv library to ~/.config/direnv/lib/ros.sh.
    • Creates .envrc file (if it doesn't exist) containing layout ros .buildenv. Support for this layout is contained in our direnv library.
    • Creates the .buildenv directory with another .envrc file and a colcon wrapper.

  4. Configure your build environment in ./.buildenv/.envrc. Typically sourcing the underlay is sufficient:

    source /opt/ros/rolling/setup.bash

  5. Enable direnv in both directories:

    direnv allow .buildenv
direnv allow .

Installation

Instead of heaving ros-direnv in some random directory, you can install it to /usr/local by running:

make install

If you prefer another location, specify it with the PREFIX variable, e.g.:

make install PREFIX=$HOME

You can also install ros-direnv as Nix flake:

nix profile install github:wentasah/ros-direnv --no-write-lock-file

After installation, ros-direnv-setup command should be available in your PATH.

Problem we are solving

direnv works well for most types of projects, but not for ROS. The reason is that with ROS you need to use two different environments in a single workspace:

  • Environment for building the workspace. This is usually set by sourcing a setup file from a ROS underlay, e.g., source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash.

  • Environment for using the packages from the workspace (overlay). This requires sourcing the local_setup.bash on top of the underlay setup.

This is described in more detail in this ROS tutorial and colcon documentation.

The problem is that manually switching between the two environments is error prone.

Solution

The solution in this repository uses direnv to automatically load both underlay and overlay environments, but build commands such as colcon are run only in the underlay environment.

How it works?

direnv loads the build (underlay) environment from .buildenv/.envrc and the overlay environment from install/local_setup.bash (if it exists). Further, it prepends .buildenv to your PATH. The .buildenv directory contains wrappers for commands that need to be run in the build environment. By default only colcon wrapper is there, but you're free to wrap other commands. The wrapper runs the original command via direnv exec with the environment from .buildenv/.envrc.