Installation Ubuntu

Installing on Ubuntu 14.04 or 16.04

Install required system packages

# Install ROS 
export UBUNTU_VERSION=xenial #(Ubuntu 16.04: xenial, Ubuntu 14.04: trusty)
export ROS_VERSION=kinetic #(Ubuntu 16.04: kinetic, Ubuntu 14.04: indigo)

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $UBUNTU_VERSION main"
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ros-$ROS_VERSION-desktop-full "ros-$ROS_VERSION-tf2-*" "ros-$ROS_VERSION-camera-info-manager*"              

# Install framework dependencies.
sudo apt-get install autotools-dev ccache doxygen dh-autoreconf git libgtest-dev libreadline-dev libssh2-1-dev pylint clang-format-3.8 python-autopep8 python-catkin-tools python-pip python-git python-setuptools python-termcolor python-wstool 

sudo pip install requests

Update ROS environment

sudo rosdep init
rosdep update
echo ". /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

(OPTIONAL) Install ccache for faster rebuilds.

ccache is a tool that caches intermediate build files to speed up rebuilds of the same code. On Ubuntu it can be set up with the following command. The max. cache size is set to 10GB and can be adapt on the lines below:

sudo apt-get install -y ccache &&\
echo 'export PATH="/usr/lib/ccache:$PATH"' | tee -a ~/.bashrc &&\
source ~/.bashrc && echo $PATH
ccache --max-size=10G

Your path (at least the beginning) should look like:

/usr/lib/ccache:/usr/local/cuda-5.5/bin/:/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

And g++/gcc should now point to:

which g++ gcc
/usr/lib/ccache/g++
/usr/lib/ccache/gcc

Show cache statistics:

ccache -s

Empty the cache and reset the stats:

ccache -C -z

ccache only works for a clean workspace. You will need a make clean otherwise.

Create a catkin workspace

To create a workspace, run:

export ROS_VERSION=kinetic #(Ubuntu 16.04: kinetic, Ubuntu 14.04: indigo)
export CATKIN_WS=~/maplab_ws
mkdir -p $CATKIN_WS/src
cd $CATKIN_WS
catkin init
catkin config --merge-devel # Necessary for catkin_tools >= 0.4.
catkin config --extend /opt/ros/$ROS_VERSION
catkin config --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cd src

Now you can clone maplab and its dependencies, either via HTTPS or SSH.

Cloning over HTTPS (no github account needed)

git clone https://github.com/ethz-asl/maplab.git --recursive
git clone [email protected]:ethz-asl/maplab_dependencies --recursive

Cloning over SSH (github account needed)

git clone [email protected]:ethz-asl/maplab.git --recursive
git clone [email protected]:ethz-asl/maplab_dependencies.git --recursive

Setting up the linter

This setups a linter which checks if the code conforms to our style guide during commits. These steps are only necessary if you plan on contributing to maplab.

cd $CATKIN_WS/src/maplab
./tools/linter/init-git-hooks.py
cd ..

Building maplab

cd $CATKIN_WS
catkin build maplab

Solutions to specific issues

opencv3_catkin build freezes.

A known cause for this is an installed MATLAB using a network licence. The build can stall on getting the licence authenticated; so make sure that the licence server can be accessed, connect to the VPN if required.

Error of libGL.so with Nvidia drivers

make[5]: *** No rule to make target '/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so', needed by 'lib/libopencv_viz.so.3.2.0'.  Stop.

consider redefining the symbolic link that somehow got lost in your Ubuntu by:

sudo rm /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libGL.so

ImportError: No module named 'requests'

Install requests by calling:

sudo pip install requests