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Humble-Installation-on-Ubuntu22.md

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As discussed in Readme, we will install the Humble Hawkbill, the stable and currently supported distribution of ROS2 released on May 23rd 2022 with an End of Life (EOL) date of May 2027. The steps for installation are as follows :

Step 1 : Go to official documentation of ROS2-Humble Hawkbill distribution and click on Installation :

https://docs.ros.org/en/humble/index.html

Step 2 : There are 2 ways of installation : using binary packages or build from source. We will select the install from Debian Binary Packages.

Step 3 : Set locale which supports UTF-8. (or minimal like POSIX) with the following commands :

Check for UTF-8 :

locale

Next install locales, it will take a while : 
sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales


sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8


sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

locale  # verify settings

Step 4 : Setup sources to add the ROS 2 apt repository to system. First ensure that the Ubuntu Universe repository is enabled.

sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository universe

Step 5 : Add the ROS 2 GPG key with apt

sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl -y
sudo curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.key -o /usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg

Step 6 : Add the repository to sources list

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg] http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo $UBUNTU_CODENAME) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros2.list > /dev/null

Step 7 : Install ROS2 packages. Update apt repository caches after setting up the repositories

sudo apt update

Ensure system is up to date before installing new packages

sudo apt upgrade

Now we have 2 choices to install ROS2 : either Desktop Install or ROS-Base. Desktop Install includes GUI tools such as RViz, demos and tutorials whereas ROS-Base is bare bones which includes communication libraries, message packages and CLI but not GUI tools. We proceed to install ROS2 Desktop Install

sudo apt install ros-humble-desktop

Next install development tools: compilers and other tools to build ROS packages

sudo apt install ros-dev-tools

Step 8 : Environment Setup

Set up your environment by sourcing the following file.

source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash

This step of sourcing the script has to be done every time a new terminal is opened and we wish to run ros2. If this step is skipped and we try running ros2, we get the command not found error :

To avoid running this step every time, we can add the environment path to the bash file :

gedit ~/.bashrc

Now add the line source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash to the end of this file and save it. Now, whenever ros2 is run in a new terminal, the environment is already sourced.

Step 9 : Now the setup is complete. This last step is for verifying the correctness of the installation.

##Examples : Start first ROS2 node : ROS2 node is a ROS2 program that interacts with ROS2 communications and tools. For understanding, use example packages directly from the ros2 installation (without needing to create one)

terminal 1 : ros2 run packagename nodename ros2 run demo_node (press tab twice for autocompletion : will show the list of packages)

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

press enter node starts running ctrl c to kill the node

terminal 2 : in other terminal :

ros2 run demo_nods_py listener

enter starts listening

Thus both C++ and Python APIs are working correctly and the ROS2 Humble is ready for use on Ubuntu 22.04.

Notes :

  1. We selected the install from Debian Binary Packages since it results in a fully-functional and usable ROS2 and alos it is more convenient because it installs its necessary dependencies automatically and updates alongside regular system updates. On the other hand, building from source is for developers looking to alter or explicitly omit parts of ROS 2’s base. It is also recommended for platforms that don’t support binaries. Building from source also gives you the option to install the absolute latest version of ROS 2.

  2. For Debian, access to root is essential. If root access is not available, select install from 'fat' drive. Also, debian is exclusive to Ubuntu. So for Mac or Windows, install from 'fat' drive.