rviz

This branch is still under construction and is targeted for ROS 2 and/or ROS 1 M-Turtle.

Setup

Install ros2 (needed for ament at least and ros2's C++ api for the version of rviz in ros 2):

https://github.com/ros2/ros2/wiki/Installation

Currently the latest release (beta3) is not sufficient to build rviz so you need to build the ros2 master from source.

Prerequisites

Ubuntu

There will be a setup.bash file from your ros2 build you can source. The current state of this branch requires a from-source build though.

Install the following Ubuntu packages:

apt install libxaw7-dev libgles2-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev qt5-default libyaml-cpp-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

Source the setup file before continuing:

$ source path/to/ros2/install/setup.bash

Windows

Note Make sure to install all dependencies in either 32 bit or 64 bit version and do not mix.

This setup was tested for Windows 10 x64.

Build CURL 7.56.0

• Download CURL sources from GitHub
• Extract to local folder (e.g. to C:\ros2\curl-7.56.0)
• Create and change to build folder (e.g. C:\ros2\curl-7.56.0\build)
  • Configure CMake: cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64" ../
  • Build the project: cmake --build . --config Debug
  • Install to C:\Program Files: cmake --build . --config Debug --target Install

Get Boost (No build required)

• Download Boost sources from https://dl.bintray.com/boostorg/release/1.65.1/source/
• Extract to local folder (e.g. to C:\ros2\boost_1_65_1)

Build yaml-cpp

• Download yaml-cpp sources from GitHub
• Extract to local folder (e.g. to C:\ros2\yaml-cpp-release-0.5.3)
• Create and change to build folder (e.g. C:\ros2\yaml-cpp-release-0.5.3\build)
  • Configure CMake: cmake -G "cmake -G "Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64" ../ -DBoost_INCLUDE_DIR=C:\ros2\boost_1_65_1
  • Build the project: cmake --build . --config Debug
  • Install to C:\Program Files: cmake --build . --config Debug --target Install

Setup environment

• add Qt binary files to PATH (e.g. C:\Qt\5.9.1\msvc2017_64\bin)
• set QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable (e.g. C:\Qt\5.9.1\msvc2017_64\plugins\platforms)
• Add Curl and yaml-cppto the CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH environment variable
  • Example: C:\Program Files\CURL;C:\Program Files\YAML_CPP
• Add Curl binary to PATH (e.g. C:\Program Files\CURL\bin)
• Set BOOST_INCLUDEDIR environment variable to Boost include directory (e.g. C:\ros2\boost_1_65_1)
• Add patch.exe to PATH (e.g. from Git Bash, C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin)
• (For Testing) Add Cppcheck binary to PATH (e.g. C:\Program Files\Cppcheck)

Source the setup file before continuing:

$ call path/to/ros2/install/setup.bat

Building RViz

Create a new workspace:

$ mkdir -p ~/rviz2_ws/src
$ cd ~/rviz2_ws/src

Clone these repositories into the source folder:

$ git clone https://github.com/ros2/rviz.git
$ git clone https://github.com/ros/pluginlib.git -b ros2
$ git clone https://github.com/ros2/tinyxml2_vendor.git

Then build all the packages with this command:

$ ament build

Or specific packages with command, for example just rviz_ogre_vendor and then rviz_rendering:

$ ament build --only rviz_ogre_vendor
$ ament build --only rviz_rendering

More instructions and examples to come.

Developer Guide

In addition to the ROS 2 Developer Guide we suggest the following.

Testing

Main rationale here is to create code that can be well tested by avoiding highly coupled components.

• Avoid free functions (cannot be mocked).
• Create abstract base classes (interface) for dependencies. (This allows for a mock to be completely independent of the actual implementing class.)
• Use only the interface in the dependent code.
• Specify dependencies as a constructor argument.
• Prefer std::unique_ptr for storing the dependency instead of a raw pointer.