ROS Docker Images

This project provides docker images for ROS, along with optional NVIDIA acceleration support, with a friendly startup script and VSCode development support.

Example use cases:

• Testing a ROS network in a containerized environment
• Running ROS melodic on Ubuntu 19.04, or on any unsupported platform

Docker Hub: https://hub.docker.com/r/jaci/ros
GitHub: https://github.com/JacisNonsense/docker-ros

Setting Up

1. Install the shell utilities

cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/JacisNonsense/docker-ros

cd docker-ros
rm -r ~/.docker-ros
cp -r shell/ ~/.docker-ros

2. Edit your .bashrc / .zshrc to include the following lines

export UID=${UID}
export GID=${GID}

source ~/.docker-ros/ros.sh

# OPTIONAL: Isolate the default HOME for the docker container if you don't want to passthrough your own.
ROS_DOCKER_HOME=path/to/my/isolated/home

3. Install nvidia-docker2 if you have a NVIDIA GPU: nvidia-docker repo

Running

$ ros <version>

Where <version> is one of the following:

• kinetic, melodic - Aliases to kinetic-desktop-full and melodic-desktop-full
• kinetic-ros-core, kinetic-ros-base, kinetic-robot, kinetic-perception, kinetic-desktop, kinetic-desktop-full
• melodic-ros-core, melodic-ros-base, melodic-robot, melodic-perception, melodic-desktop, melodic-desktop-full

For example:

$ ros melodic
user@host:/work$ 

By default, the ros script will automatically:

• Detect NVIDIA acceleration, and use the nvidia-docker2 runtime (you must install it first!)
• Setup X forwarding
• Create a new container image, passing through your local user and $HOME
• Passthrough your current directory to /work via docker bind mount
• Make the container interactive (-it --rm)

You can specify your own image with --image image:

$ ros --image myname/myimage:version

You can launch a program directly from the ros script if you don't require a bash prompt:

$ ros melodic rviz

Using with Visual Studio Code (VSCode)

Install the Remote - Container extension and copy the .devcontainer folder into your VSCode workspace.

Open the command palette with CTRL + SHIFT + P and select Remote-Containers: Reopen Folder in Container. VSCode will build a new container and open the editor within the context of the container, providing C++ and Python intellisense with the ros installation.

By default, the VSCode containers do not forward X11 nor run on the NVIDIA docker runtime. If you require GUI applications and/or NVIDIA acceleration, launch with ros <version> in a terminal (as seen in the 'Running' section above).