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Building and Sourcing Packages

Toya Takahashi edited this page Jan 25, 2025 · 14 revisions

Building packages using colcon

Build dev_ws by running the following command. colcon build compiles the source code and installs necessary files of all packages in the workspace.

cd ~/arcturus/dev_ws
colcon build --symlink-install

If installed the VRX simulation environment, build vrx_ws by running:

cd ~/arcturus/vrx_ws
colcon build --merge-install

You can also select specific packages to build by running the following command where <packages_to_select> is a space-separated list of packages.

colcon build --symlink-install --packages-select <packages_to_select>

A good rule of thumb is to rebuild a package if you added a new file or modified a C++ file. But when in doubt, colcon build!

Sourcing the setup file

To use a ROS package, you have to source the setup file of the workspace the package is in. First, to have access to ROS 2 commands, you need to run this command on every new shell:

source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash

Then, to use the all_seaing_vehicle packages, you have to source dev_ws by running this command:

source ~/arcturus/dev_ws/install/setup.bash

Finally, if applicable, source vrx_ws:

source ~/arcturus/vrx_ws/install/setup.bash

Adding the commands to .bashrc

Running these commands in every new terminal can be time-consuming, so it is recommended that you put them in your .bashrc, a shell script that runs every time a new terminal is opened.

Open ~/.bashrc using your favorite text editor. Some common ones are nano, vim, neovim, emacs, and gedit.

nano ~/.bashrc

Add the following lines to the end:

source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash
source ~/arcturus/dev_ws/install/setup.bash
source ~/arcturus/vrx_ws/install/setup.bash

Save your new .bashrc and open a new terminal. Your new terminal should have ROS 2 and all_seaing_vehicle packages activated.