A tool to automate compiling ROS and ROS 2 workspaces to non-native architectures.
🚧 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
- ROS Distro
- ROS:
kinetic
,melodic
- ROS 2:
dashing
,eloquent
- ROS:
- OS:
Ubuntu
,Debian
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 3.5 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
This script requires a sysroot
directory containing the ROS 2 workspace, and
the toolchain.
The following instructions explain how to create a sysroot
directory.
mkdir -p sysroot/qemu-user-static
mkdir -p sysroot/ros_ws/src
cp /usr/bin/qemu-*-static sysroot/qemu-user-static/
Use ROS or ROS 2 source installation guide to get the ROS repositories needed to cross compile.
Once you have the desired sources, copy them in the sysroot
to use with the tool.
# Copy ros sources into the sysroot directory
cp -r <full_path_to_your_ros_ws>/src sysroot/ros_ws/src
In the end your sysroot
directory should look like this:
sysroot/
+-- qemu-user-static/
| +-- qemu-*-static
+-- ros_ws/
+-- src/
|-- (ros packages)
+-- ...
Then run the tool:
python3 -m ros_cross_compile \
--sysroot-path /absolute/path/to/sysroot \
--arch aarch64 \
--os ubuntu
--rosdistro dashing
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
Your custom setup script (see preceding) may need some data that is not accessible within the sysroot creation environment.
For example, you need custom rosdep rules files to find and install your dependencies.
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:
python3 -m ros_cross_compile \
--sysroot-path /absolute/path/to/sysroot
--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.
For a new user, this section walks you through a representative use case, step by step.
This tutorial demonstrates how to cross-compile the File Talker tool against ROS 2 Dashing, to run on an ARM64 Ubuntu system.
You can generalize this workflow to any .repos
file for your project.
NOTE: this tutorial assumes a Debian-based (including Ubuntu) Linux distribution as the host platform.
- Create a directory for your workspace
mkdir cross_compile_ws
cd cross_compile_ws
- Create a
.repos
file forvcs
file_talker.repos
repositories: file_talker: type: git url: https://github.com/ros-tooling/file_talker.git version: master
- Set up the sysroot environment for the cross-compiler to use
mkdir -p sysroot/qemu-user-static/
mkdir -p sysroot/ros_ws/src/
cp /usr/bin/qemu-*-static sysroot/qemu-user-static
vcs import ros_ws/src < file_talker.repos
python3 -m ros_cross_compile \
--sysroot-path $(pwd) \
--rosdistro dashing \
--arch aarch64 \
--os ubuntu
Here is a detailed look at the arguments passed to the script:
--sysroot-path $(pwd)
Point the ros_cross_compile
tool to the absolute path of the directory containing the sysroot
directory created earlier.
You could run the tool from any directory, but in this case the current working directory contains sysroot
, hence $(pwd)
--rosdistro dashing
You may specify both ROS and ROS 2 distributions by name, for example, kinetic
(ROS) or dashing
(ROS 2).
ros_cross_compile -h
prints the supported distributions for this option
--arch aarch64
Target the ARMv8 / ARM64 / aarch64 architecture (which are different names for the same thing).
ros_cross_compile -h
prints the supported architectures for this option.
--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 Dashing - 18.04 Bionic Beaver.
Run the following command
ls sysroot/ros_ws/
If the build succeeded, the directory looks like this:
ros_ws/
+-- src/
|-- file_talker
+-- install_aarch64/
|-- ...
The created directory install_aarch64
is the installation of your ROS workspace for your target architecture.
You can verify this:
$ file ros_ws/install_aarch64/lib/file_talker/file_talker 0s
ros_ws/install_aarch64/lib/file_talker/file_talker: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, ARM aarch64, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-, for GNU/Linux 3.7.0, BuildID[sha1]=02ede8a648dfa6b5b30c03d54c6d87fd9151389e, 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.
# 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 dashing -y
Now you may use the ROS installation as you would on any other system
source install_aarch64/setup.bash
ros2 run file_talker file_talker my_text_file.txt
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 |