RoverFlake2

2023 - Present ROS2 repo for rover RoverFlake1 is old.

Setting up this repo on your computer

Reccomended/Required: Ubuntu 22.04

SSH authentication is the easiest way to get authorized to push code.

To set up SSH keys on your computer, follow this tutorial: Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent

Then, set up the newly generated SSH in github with this tutorial: Adding a new SSH key to your GitHub account

Now, you can clone the repo, with SSH, NOT HTTPS:

#Install into your home directory

git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:UBC-Snowbots/RoverFlake2.git

Obviously you are welcome to use HTTPS or another form of authentication (like GitHub Desktop) if you prefer

Then cd in, and we can use setup scripts from here.

Before using setup scripts, you need to set your ROVERFLAKE_ROOT enviroment variable. Its best to throw this in your .bashrc file so that it sets permanently. One liner to do that:

echo "export ROVERFLAKE_ROOT=<path_to_roverflake>" >> ~/.bashrc

If the repo is in your home directory, youd do:

echo "export ROVERFLAKE_ROOT=/home/<your_user>/Roverflake2" >> ~/.bashrc

bash setup_scripts/setup_everything_common.sh

This script will install ros2, as well as other common dependencies.

After that script finishes, try to build! From the root of RoverFlake2:

colcon build (it should automatically use --symlink-install as set in colcon_defaults.yaml)

If you get an error... panic, scream, and hurl insults at your computer. Then look at common issues and ask for help in the discord.

Unit Tests

We use Catch2 for CPP unit tests. To keep it simple, we don't integrate with colcon tests, we have a seperate CMakeLists.txt and Makefile at the root, to handle all unit tests. To build and run tests: (the -j16 is just to compile faster by specifying how many cores to use)

make -j16 test To add tests, open up the CMakeLists.txt and manually add paths to test files. Follow the comments within the file. Catch2 is powerful, lightweight, and easy to use. It has a lot of built in macros to help with testing but even just the basics is enough to get by.

COMMON ISSUES & TROUBLESHOOTING

arm_hardware_interface fails to build:

Could not find a package configuration file provided by "serial" with any of the following names:

serialConfig.cmake

...

if src/external_pkgs/serial is empty, you need to update your git submodules:

'git submodule init' 'git submodule update'

This is only needed if you did not clone recursivley.

'serial' is a ros2 package, its also a git repository. Instead of just copying the code into our repository, git submodules makes it easier to manage different git repositories.

This error means CMake cannot find a package, specifically a ROS2 package. In the above error example CMake cannot find the serial package, which is an external package we use to communicate over USB connections. If you get this error for another package, you may just need to install it:

'sudo apt install ros-humble-<package_name>'