ros-docker-clion

Workflow merging the Holy Trinity - ROS + Docker + CLion IDE.

But why I hear you ask. Here are my reasons:

I cannot stand VMs
Working on multiple projects each using different ROS distros, I am done dual booting and copying dotfiles, creating GitHub pipelines and manually setting up docker environments with no code completions and hints ;-;
Well that's pretty much it.

Feel free to not use it.

Improvements and suggestions are always welcome.

Features

A sandbox container for building and testing ROS projects.
IDE auto-completion and code hints irrespective of host OS and ROS Distribution.
Simulation environment based on nvidia-docker2. GUI based nodes and applications can be run inside this container.

Setup

Install Docker and nvidia-docker2

- Docker official Installation guide - Nvidia container toolkit installation

Run the setup script

bash dev/setup.sh

Build the images

This might take some time.

docker-compose build

Start services

Run the containers

docker-compose up

This creates a sandbox container configured with SSH and a simulation container which can be used to run GUI based applications like RViz and Gazebo.

You can now SSH into the sandbox environment and make sure everything is working properly.

ssh rosdev@localhost -p 2222

If you change your settings later or have ssh'ed into a host with similar settings before, clear SSH cache with

ssh-keygen -f "$HOME/.ssh/known_hosts" -R "[localhost]:2222"

Setup CLion

Open Settings in CLion and add a new remote toolchain. Give it a name (say Docker) and use the credentials

used in the Dockerfile for SSH. alt toolchainImg

Setup workspace

We need to fetch the required environment variables for remote builds and running binaries.

SSH into the environment and trigger a catkin build

ssh rosdev@localhost -p 2222
cd /home/rosdev/catkin_ws
. /opt/ros/melodic/setup.sh
catkin_make
. devel/setup.sh

NOTE: You can use Bash instead of the default shell sh, in that case source the corresponding setup scripts.

Run the following script to fetch the environment variables.

rosenv="ROSROOT ROSMASTERURI ROSPACKAGEPATH CMAKEPREFIXPATH PKGCONFIGPATH PYTHONPATH LDLIBRARYPATH PATH ROSDISTRO ROSPYTHONVERSION ROSLOCALHOSTONLY ROSVERSION"
env_string=""
for e in ${ros_env}; do
    env_string+="$e=${!e};"
done
echo "$env_string"