A template for developing ROS2 applications in Rust using VSCode as IDE inside of a Docker container
It uses the un-official (for now) ros2_rust project
This is still in development and might not yet work perfectly! Jump in and file issues or submit changes!
I was heavily inspired by Allison Thackston's (@athackst) vscode_ros2_workspace, so please check out that project and give it a star!
You should already have Docker and VSCode with the remote containers plugin installed on your system.
Click on "use this template" in the top right corner of this repo on the Github site.
On the next dialog, name the repository you would like to start and decide if you want all of the branches, or just the main.
Github will then create a new repository with the contents of this one in your account. It grabs the latest changes as "initial commit".
Now you can clone your repo as normal
Now that you've cloned your repo onto your computer, you can open it in VSCode (File->Open Folder).
When you open it for the first time, you should see a little popup that asks you if you would like to open it in a container. Say yes!
If you don't see the pop-up, click on the little green square in the bottom left corner, which should bring up the container dialog
In the dialog, select "Remote Containers: Reopen in container"
VSCode will build the dockerfile inside of .devcontainer for you. If you open a terminal inside VSCode (Terminal->New Terminal), you should see that your username has been changed to ros, and the bottom left green corner should say "Dev Container"
Once inside the container, it's easy to setup ROS and build the rust / ROS examples.
Setup ROS:
cd /workspaces/ros2_rust_workspace/
vcs import src < src/ros2_rust/ros2_rust_foxy.repos
. /opt/ros/foxy/setup.sh
colcon build --packages-up-to examples_rclrs_message_demo
This will build the examples from the ros2_rust project.
Publisher:
# Do this in a new terminal
. ./install/setup.sh
ros2 run examples_rclrs_minimal_pub_sub minimal_publisher
Subscriber:
# Do this in a new terminal
. ./install/setup.sh
ros2 run examples_rclrs_minimal_pub_sub minimal_subscriber
Keenan Johnson is an electrical and software engineer with experience building robots of all shapes and sizes.
Reach out if you need help or are interested in hiring me as a consultant for your project.