Visual Studio Code Extension for ROS

The Visual Studio Code Extension for ROS provides support for Robot Operating System (ROS) development. Providing an easier and more stream-lined developer experience.

Getting Started

The extension will automatically start when you open a catkin or colcon workspace. The build system (e.g. catkin_make or catkin build) will automatically be confirmed from the hidden files associated with each system. The ROS distro will automatically be confirmed from the parent environment, or you will be prompted to select a ROS distro if this can't be done automatically.

NOTE: You must build the catkin workspace at least once before the extension will recognise it.

To start ROS core, you can use the ROS: Start Core command from the Visual Studio Code command pallet. This command pallet can be accessed by pressing ctrl + shift + p. The ROS Core indicator in the bottom left will show if the core is currently running, and you can click on this taskbar item to view the status of ROS.

The first time you open a ROS workspace the extension will automatically create build and test tasks and update the C++ and Python paths. You can re-run this process later using the appropriate commands.

Video Walkthrough

Features

• Automatic ROS environment configuration.
• Allows starting, stopping and viewing the ROS core status.
• Automatically discover catkin_make or catkin build build tasks.
• Create catkin packages using catkin_create_pkg script or catkin create pkg.
• Run rosrun or roslaunch
• Resolve dependencies with rosdep shortcut
• Syntax highlighting for .msg, .urdf and other ROS files.
• Automatically add the ROS C++ include and Python import paths.
• Format C++ using the ROS clang-format style.
• Preview URDF and Xacro files.
• Debug a single ROS node (C++ or Python) by attaching to the process.
• Debug ROS nodes (C++ or Python) launched from a .launch file.

Commands

You can access the following commands from the Visual Studio Code command pallet.

Name	Description
ROS: Create Catkin Package	Create a catkin package. You can right click on a folder in the explorer to create it in a specific location.
ROS: Create Terminal	Create a terminal with the ROS environment.
ROS: Show Core Status	Open a detail view showing ROS core runtime status.
ROS: Start Core	Start ROS core.
ROS: Stop Core	Terminate ROS core.
ROS: Update C++ Properties	Update the C++ include path to include ROS.
ROS: Update Python Path	Update the Python path to include ROS.
ROS: Preview URDF	Preview URDF and Xacro files. Updates after changes are saved.
ROS: Install ROS Dependencies for this workspace using rosdep	Shortcut for rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y.

Launch Debugging

The Visual Studio Code extension for ROS supports launch debugging for ROS 1 and ROS 2 nodes. The VSCode extension currently supports debugging ROS written in Python and C++. The ROS node or nodes to be debugged must be placed in a ROS launch file with the extension .launch for ROS1 or ROS2 or with the extension .py for ROS2.

To debug a C++ ROS node, please build your workspace using RelWithDebInfo in order to generate debug symbols needed for the C++ debugger:

ROS1

catkin_make -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo

ROS2

colcon build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo

Reporting Security Issues

Security issues and bugs should be reported privately, via email, to the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) at secure@microsoft.com. You should receive a response within 24 hours. If for some reason you do not, please follow up via email to ensure we received your original message.

Further information, including the MSRC PGP key, can be found in the Security TechCenter.

Data and Telemetry

This extension collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more.

This extension respects the telemetry.enableTelemetry setting, learn more about this option.

Contribution

Contributions are always welcome! Please see our contributing guide for more details!

A big Thank you! to everyone that have helped make this extension better!

• Andrew Short (@ajshort), original author
• James Giller (@JamesGiller)

ROS Web Tools

This extension leverages ROS Web Tools for URDF Previewing.

Russell Toris, Julius Kammerl, David Lu, Jihoon Lee, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Sarah Osentoski, Mitchell Wills, and Sonia Chernova. Robot Web Tools: Efficient Messaging for Cloud Robotics. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2015