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Software installation
These instructions are currently being updated as the repository changes, if anything seems incorrect please contact Brice/Austin or if you know what you're doing correct it yourself.
The only tested system for running software is currently 64-bit Ubuntu 12.04. In general it should build on most *NIX distributions with the appropriate libraries and tools installed. It should even work in and Mac OSX. Note that you will need proper 3D graphics / hardware acceleration to be able to run rviz, the visualization software.
In particular, it will not work with Ubuntu 14.04 and newer!
We currently use ROS Hydro. The code won't work with any other version of ROS.
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu precise main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
wget http://packages.ros.org/ros.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ros-hydro-desktop python-rosdep python-wstool
sudo rosdep init
Note: If you get the error:
ERROR: default sources list file already exists:
/etc/ros/rosdep/sources.list.d/20-default.list
Please delete if you wish to re-initialize
Then run:
sudo rm -r /etc/ros
sudo rosdep init
Gperftools is used as a profiler and for memory leak detection. Currently it needs to be installed separately.
wget http://gperftools.googlecode.com/files/gperftools-2.1.tar.gz
tar xzf gperftools-2.1.tar.gz
cd gperftools-2.1
./configure --enable-frame-pointers
make
sudo make install
To speed up compilation it is recommended that you install ccache. From the ccache website: "ccache is a compiler cache. It speeds up recompilation by caching previous compilations and detecting when the same compilation is being done again."
Run sudo apt-get install ccache. Then add the following line to your .bashrc:
export PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:$PATH
This folder contains drop in replacements for the gcc tools (gcc, g++, cc, etc.).
Catkin is the new build system for ROS that was introduced in groovy. Compared to the old build system (rosbuild):
- it needs a workspace with a special layout
- the manifest.xml has been replaced by a package.xml with a different structure
- the CMakeLists.txt has a different structure and uses less custom commands
- the whole workspace is considered as one large project, with each package in the workspace considered as a subdir by cmake
- build is done out of source
- you cannot build individual packages like what was possible with rosmake
You can create your workspace anywhere you want and it can have any name. Here it will be ~/catkin_ws
source /opt/ros/hydro/setup.bash
mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws
cd ~/catkin_ws
wstool init src
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash
Finally, add source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash in your .bashrc file so that your environment will be sourced each time you open a terminal.
Our code is now hosted on github as a set of repositories, some of which are private:
- stdr_libraries: contains some library packages
- tf: a custom version of the TF package needed until we migrate to TF2
- driving_public: some public packages, that allow to work with our log files
- driving: a private repo that holds all our private code. To gain access, send you github user name (create an account if necessary) to Brice or Austin.
We use wstool to pull all those repos. Get the rosinstall (from the driving or driving_public repo) and copy it as ~/catkin_ws/src/.rosinstall. Then from the src folder, do wstool up, which will clone / pull from the github repos.
Before building, you need to install the dependencies:
rosdep update
rosdep install --from-paths ~/catkin_ws/src -i -y
Finally you are ready to build:
cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make -j -l8
The -j -l8 option is optional. It is tells make to run several jobs in parallel for the build but limit the load to 8. Best to a number lower or equal to the number of cores on your machine.
Libraries and executables are placed in ~/catkin_ws/devel/lib
Additionally, some data needs to be downloaded from the CS server:
cd ~/catkin_ws/build
make download_extra_data
In the future, to rebuild the code, say after you have made some changes, you either use catkin_make from the workspace root folder, or use make from the build folder.
On some systems (namely on nuthouse and oldpro), I had to fix an issue with the GL libraries:
cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libGL.la sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libGL.so sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libGL.so.310.19
The environment variable VLR_ROOT needs to be defined (export VLR_ROOT=~ in your bashrc). It is used to locate the imagery data ($VLR_ROOT/imagery), but if you don't have the imagery data or don't need to work with it, you can set it to any location.