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Installing ROS packages in a Dockerfile

There are a few methods you could take to install ROS packages with a Dockerfile.

Install a ros metapackage

If you're dismayed that the official images from ROS are only ros-<distro>-base, you can install the entire ros-<distro>-desktop-full package. This will make your image larger, but less prone to missing packages as you develop.

Alternatively, you can install smaller packages or metapackages:

RUN apt update && apt install -y \
    ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-robot \
    ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-navigation \
    ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-viz \
    ros-${ROS_DISTRO}-pointcloud-to-laserscan

Install from source code dependencies

In this example, a .rosinstall file is used to pull several packages from git into a temporary workspace, using wstool or vcstool. Then, the rosdep install command is used to find dependencies in the src folder. Finally, the temporary workspace is removed, becuase the code will be added for development later in a volume.

RUN source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash &&\
    mkdir -p tmp_ws/src &&\
    cd tmp_ws &&\
    wstool init src https://raw.githubusercontent.com/utexas-bwi/bwi/master/rosinstall/melodic.rosinstall &&\
    rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro melodic -y &&\
    cd /root && rm -r tmp_ws

Use the ADD or COPY commands

There are some idiosyncrasies with these commands - review the docker docs before using them.

Similarly, you can use the Dockerfile ADD command to add a git repo. Note that this does not include the .git directory by default. You can change the behavior with the --keep-git-dir=true flag.

WORKDIR /root
RUN mkdir -p tmp_ws/src
ADD https://github.com/labname/robot_package.git ~/tmp_ws/src/robot_package
RUN source /opt/ros/${ROS_DISTRO}/setup.bash \
    && cd tmp_ws \
    && rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro ${ROS_DISTRO} -y &&\
    cd /root && rm -r tmp_ws

Or, you can copy a directory from your local system to the image filesystem, such as

COPY ./Source /root/tmp_ws/src

The above command copies a folder called Source that is in the build context to a directory in the image at /root/tmp_ws/src. Note that it will remain a part of the image unless to remove it later in the Dockerfile.