A tool to automate compiling ROS and ROS 2 workspaces to non-native architectures.
๐ง ros_cross_compile
relies on running emulated builds
using QEmu, #69 tracks progress toward enabling cross-compilation.
This tool supports compiling a workspace for all combinations of the following:
- Architecture:
armhf
,aarch64
,x86_64
- ROS Distro
- ROS:
melodic
,noetic
- ROS 2:
dashing
,foxy
,galactic
,rolling
- ROS:
- OS:
Ubuntu
,Debian
NOTE: ROS 2 supports Debian only as a Tier 3 platform.
This means that there are not apt
repositories available for the ROS 2 Core on this platform.
Because of that, when targeting Debian for a ROS 2 workspace, you must also include the source for the core as well.
It is recommended to use a release branch of ros2.repos
from https://github.com/ros2/ros2 to do so, rather than master
, so that you are not affected by development branch bugs and API changes.
This tool officially supports running on the following host systems. Note that many others likely work, but these are being thoroughly tested.
- Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver
- OSX Mojave
This tool requires that you have already installed
- Docker
- Follow the instructions to add yourself to the
docker
group as well, so you can run containers as a non-root user
- Follow the instructions to add yourself to the
- Python 3.6 or higher
If you are using a Linux host, you must also install QEmu (Docker for OSX performs emulation automatically):
sudo apt-get install qemu-user-static
To install the stable release,
pip3 install ros_cross_compile
If you would like the latest nightly build, you can get it from Test PyPI
pip3 install --index-url https://test.pypi.org/simple/ ros_cross_compile
- Collect dependencies
- Create a Docker image that has
rosdep
- Run the
rosdep
image against your target workspace to output a script that describes how to install its dependencies
- Create a Docker image that has
- Create "sysroot image" that has everything needed for building target workspace
- Use a base image for the target architecture (aarch64, armhf, ...)
- Install build tools (compilers, cmake, colcon, etc)
- Run the dependency installer script collected in Step 1 (if dependency list hasn't changed since last run, this uses the Docker cache)
- Build
- Runs the "sysroot image" using QEmu emulation
colcon build
- (Optional) Create runtime image
- Creates a docker image that can be used on the target platform to run the build. See "Runtime Image" section.
This package installs the ros_cross_compile
command.
The command's first argument is the path to your ROS workspace.
Here is a simple invocation for a standard workflow.
ros_cross_compile /path/to/my/workspace --arch aarch64 --os ubuntu --rosdistro foxy
For information on all available options, run ros_cross_compile -h
.
See the following sections for information on the more complex options.
To choose which packages to install dependencies for, this tool runs colcon list
on your workspace.
To build, it runs colcon build
.
You can provide arbitrary arguments to these commands via the colcon defaults.yaml
.
You can either specify the name of this file via ros_cross_compile --colcon-defaults /path/to/defaults.yaml
, or if not specified, a file called defaults.yaml
will be used if present.
For example, there are repositories checked out in your workspace that contain packages that are not needed for your application - some repos provide many packages and you may only want one! In this scenario there is a "bringup" package that acts as the entry point to your application:
# my_workspace/defaults.yaml
list:
# only install dependencies for source packages that my package depends on
packages-up-to: [my_application_bringup]
build:
# only build up to my package
packages-up-to: [my_application_bringup]
# example of a boolean commandline argument
merge-install: true
Other configurations can be passed and used as command line args. Examples are CMake build arguments, like the build type or the verb configurations for the event handlers:
# my_workspace/defaults.yaml
build:
cmake-args: ["-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release"]
event-handlers: ["console_direct+"]
Your ROS application may need nonstandard rosdep rules.
If so, you have the option to provide a script to be run before the rosdep install
command collects keys.
This script has access to the "Custom data directory" same as the "Custom setup script", see the following sections. If you need any extra files for setting up rosdep, they can be accessed via this custom data directory.
Note that:
- Rosdeps are always collected in an Ubuntu Bionic container, so scripts must be compatible with that
Here is an example script for an application that adds extra rosdep source lists
cp ./custom-data/rosdep-rules/raspicam-node.yaml /etc/ros/rosdep/custom-rules/raspicam-node.yaml
echo "yaml file:/etc/ros/rosdep/custom-rules/raspicam-node.yaml" > /etc/ros/rosdep/sources.list.d/22-raspicam-node.list
Tool invocation for this example:
ros_cross_compile /path/to/my/workspace --arch aarch64 --os ubuntu \
--custom-rosdep-script /path/to/rosdep-script.sh \
--custom-data-dir /arbitrary/local/directory
Your ROS application may have build needs that aren't covered by rosdep install
.
If this is the case (for example you need to add extra apt repos), use the option --custom-setup-script
to execute arbitrary code in the sysroot container.
The path provided may be absolute, or relative to the current directory.
Keep in mind
- It's up to the user to determine whether the script is compatible with chosen base platform
- Make sure to specify non-interactive versions of commands, for example
apt-get install -y
, or the script may hang waiting for input - You cannot make any assumptions about the state of the apt cache, so run
apt-get update
before installing packages - The script runs as root user in the container, so you don't need
sudo
Below is an example script for an application that installs some custom Raspberry Pi libraries.
apt-get update
apt-get install -y software-properties-common
# Install Raspberry Pi library that we have not provided a rosdep rule for
add-apt-repository ppa:rpi-distro/ppa
apt-get install -y pigpio
Additionally, a custom setup script may control the build environment by populating the /custom-data/setup.bash
file which will be sourced before building.
You may want to perform arbitrary post-processing on your build outputs, in the event of a sucessful build - use --custom-post-build-script
for this.
Keep in mind that it is run at the root of the built workspace.
Following is an example setup that allows a user to run colcon bundle to create a portable bundle of the cross-compiled application.
Here are the contents of ./postbuild.sh
#!/bin/bash
set -eux
apt-get update
apt-get install -y wget
wget http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | apt-key add -
apt-get install -y python3-apt
pip3 install -u setuptools pip
pip3 install -U colcon-ros-bundle
colcon bundle \
--build-base build_"${TARGET_ARCH}" \
--install-base install_"${TARGET_ARCH}" \
--bundle-base bundle_"${TARGET_ARCH}"
Now, run
ros_cross_compile /path/to/my/workspace --arch aarch64 --os ubuntu \
--custom-post-build-script ./postbuild.sh
After the build completes, you should see the bundle outputs in bundle_aarch64
Your custom setup or rosdep script (see preceding sections) may need some data that is not otherwise accessible.
For example, you need to copy some precompiled vendor binaries to a specific location, or provide custom rosdep rules files.
For this use case, you can use the option --custom-data-dir
to point to an arbitrary path.
The sysroot build copies this directory into the build environment, where it's available for use by your custom setup script at ./custom-data/
.
Example:
Custom data directory (/arbitrary/local/directory
)
/arbitrary/local/directory/
+-- my-data/
| +-- something.txt
Setup Script (/path/to/custom-setup.sh
)
#!/bin/bash
cat custom-data/something.txt
Tool invocation:
ros_cross_compile /path/to/my/workspace --arch aarch64 --os ubuntu \
--custom-setup-script /path/to/custom-setup.sh \
--custom-data-dir /arbitrary/local/directory
Now, during the sysroot creation process, you should see the contents of something.txt
printed during the execution of the custom script.
NOTE: for trivial text files, as in the preceding example, you could have created those files fully within the --custom-setup-script
. But for large or binary data such as precompiled libraries, this feature comes to the rescue.
ros_cross_compile
can optionally create and tag a Docker image that contains the build output and its runtime dependencies.
The argument --runtime-tag
takes a single value, which is the tag used for the output image.
OUTPUT_IMAGE=my_registry/image_name:image_tag
ros_cross_compile $workspace --runtime-tag $OUTPUT_IMAGE
One way to deploy this image is to push it to a registry, from where it can be pulled onto a target platform
docker push $OUTPUT_IMAGE
The image contains any necessary emulation binaries to run locally if desired for smoke testing.
docker run -it $OUTPUT_IMAGE
# In the shell inside the running container, the setup is already sourced for the default entrypoint
ros2 launch my_package my.launch.py
Note: Currently this feature is a thin layer on top of the image used for building, so it is not a fully minimal image - it contains build tools, build dependencies, and test dependencies in addition to the necessary runtime dependencies. Future work is planned to slim down this output image to a properly minimal runtime. This work is tracked in ros-tooling#263.
For a new user, this section walks you through a representative use case, step by step.
This tutorial demonstrates how to cross-compile the ROS 2 Demo Nodes against ROS 2 Foxy, to run on an ARM64 Ubuntu system. You can generalize this workflow to use on any workspace for your project.
NOTE: this tutorial assumes a Debian-based (including Ubuntu) Linux distribution as the host platform.
Create a directory for your workspace and checkout the sources
mkdir -p cross_compile_ws/src
cd cross_compile_ws
git clone -b foxy https://github.com/ros2/demos src/demos
Create a file defaults.yaml
in this directory with the following contents. This file narrows down the set of built packages, rather than building every single package in the source repository. This file is optional - see preceding section "Package Selection and Build Customization
" for more information.
build:
# only build the demo_nodes_cpp package, to save time building all of the demos
packages-up-to:
- demo_nodes_cpp
# make a merged install space, which is easier to distribute
merge-install: true
# add some output for readability
event-handlers:
- console_cohesion+
- console_package_list+
ros_cross_compile . --rosdistro foxy --arch aarch64 --os ubuntu --colcon-defaults ./defaults.yaml
Here is a detailed look at the arguments passed to the script (ros_cross_compile -h
will print all valid choices for each option):
.
- The first argument to
ros_cross_compile
is the directory of the workspace to be built. This could be any relative or absolute path, in this case it's just.
, the current working directory.
- The first argument to
--rosdistro foxy
- You may specify either a ROS and ROS 2 distribution by name, for example
noetic
(ROS) orgalactic
(ROS 2).
- You may specify either a ROS and ROS 2 distribution by name, for example
--arch aarch64
- Target the ARMv8 / ARM64 / aarch64 architecture (which are different names for effectively the same thing).
--os ubuntu
- The target OS is Ubuntu - the tool chooses the OS version automatically based on the ROS Distro's target OS. In this case for ROS 2 Foxy - Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa.
Run the following command
ls cross_compile_ws
If the build succeeded, the directory looks like this:
build_aarch64/
cc_internals/
defaults.yaml
install_aarch64/
log/
src/
- The created directory
install_aarch64
is the installation of your ROS workspace for your target architecture. cc_internals
is used byros_cross_compile
to cache artifacts between builds - as a user you will not need to inspect it
You can verify that the build created binaries for the target architecture (note "ARM aarch64" in below output. Your sha1
may differ):
$ file install_aarch64/demo_nodes_cpp/lib/demo_nodes_cpp/talker
install_aarch64/demo_nodes_cpp/lib/demo_nodes_cpp/talker: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, ARM aarch64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux-aarch64.so.1, BuildID[sha1]=f086db477d6f5f919414d63911366077f1051b80, for GNU/Linux 3.7.0, not stripped
Copy install_aarch64
onto the target system into a location of your choosing. It contains the binaries for your workspace.
If your workspace has any dependencies that are outside the source tree - that is, if rosdep
had anything to install during the build - then you still need to install these dependencies on the target system.
Note first: if you need rosdep
to install packages via the package manager, then your system will need its package manager sources (APT for Ubuntu). See Setup Sources portion of ROS 2 installation instructions for an example of how to do this on Ubuntu.
# Run this on the target system, which must have rosdep already installed
# remember `rosdep init`, `rosdep update`, `apt-get update` if you need them
rosdep install --from-paths install_aarch64/share --ignore-src --rosdistro foxy -y
Now you may use the ROS installation as you would on any other system
source install_aarch64/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker
# and in a different shell
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp listener
If you are running in docker with /var/run/docker.sock
mounted and see the following error:
No src/ directory found at /ws, did you remember to mount your workspace?
You may need to try running in docker-in-docker. This approach is demonstrated to work in gitlab-ci with a privileged runner and the following gitlab.yml
as an example:
image: teracy/ubuntu:18.04-dind-19.03.3
services:
- docker:19.03.3-dind
variables:
# Disable TLS or we get SSLv1 errors. We shouldn't need this since we mount the /certs volume.
# We also need to connect to the docker daemon via DOCKER_HOST.
DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR: ""
DOCKER_HOST: tcp://docker:2375
build-stuff:
stage: build
tags:
- ros
before_script:
# Install packages
- apt update
- apt install -qq -y qemu-user-static python3-pip rsync
# Set up the workspace
- cd ${CI_PROJECT_DIR}/..
- rm -rf cross_compile_ws/src
- mkdir -p cross_compile_ws/src
- cp -r ${CI_PROJECT_DIR} cross_compile_ws/src/
- rsync -a ${CI_PROJECT_DIR}/../cross_compile_ws ${CI_PROJECT_DIR}
- cd ${CI_PROJECT_DIR}
# Install ros_cross_compile
- pip3 install ros_cross_compile
script:
- ros_cross_compile cross_compile_ws --arch aarch64 --os ubuntu --rosdistro melodic
artifacts:
paths:
- $CI_PROJECT_DIR/cross_compile_ws/install_aarch64
expire_in: 1 week
This library is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.
ROS 2 Release | Branch Name | Development | Source Debian Package | X86-64 Debian Package | ARM64 Debian Package | ARMHF Debian package |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Latest | master |
N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | |
Dashing | dashing-devel |
N/A | N/A |