Ubuntu ARM install of ROS Groovy

There are currently some experimental builds of ROS for Ubuntu Oneiric armel, Ubuntu Precise armel and armhf, and Ubuntu Quantal armhf. These builds do not include all packages, but they should save a considerable amount of time compared to doing a full source-based installation.

The Ubuntu armel build farm status is available here, the armhf farm is here, and the build farm is maintained by Austin Hendrix.

Contents

Ubuntu ARM install of ROS Groovy
1. Installation
2. Tutorials

Installation

Configure your Ubuntu repositories

Configure your Ubuntu repositories to allow "restricted," "universe," and "multiverse." You can follow the Ubuntu guide for instructions on doing this.

Setup your sources.list

Setup your computer to accept software from the ARM mirror on packages.ros.org.

Due to limited resources, there are only active builds for Oneiric armel and Precise armhf, since these appear to be the most popular Ubuntu distributions in use on ARM.

Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise armhf)

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.namniart.com/repos/ros precise main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'

Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal armhf)

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.namniart.com/repos/ros quantal main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'

Set up your keys

wget http://packages.ros.org/ros.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
wget http://packages.namniart.com/repos/namniart.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -

Installation

First, make sure your Debian package index is up-to-date:

```
sudo apt-get update
```

There are many different libraries and tools in ROS. Most of the default configurations do not yet compile fully on ARM. You can also install ROS packages individually.

ROS-Base: (Bare Bones) ROS package, build, and communication libraries. No GUI tools.
- ```
sudo apt-get install ros-groovy-ros-base
```
Individual Package: You can install a specific ROS package (replace underscores with dashes of the package name):
- ```
sudo apt-get install ros-groovy-PACKAGE
```
  e.g.
```
sudo apt-get install ros-groovy-ros
```

To find available packages, use:

apt-cache search ros-groovy

Initialize rosdep

Before you can use ROS, you will need to install and initialize rosdep. rosdep enables you to easily install system dependencies for source you want to compile and is required to run some core components in ROS.

sudo apt-get install python-rosdep
sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

Environment setup

It's convenient if the ROS environment variables are automatically added to your bash session every time a new shell is launched:

echo "source /opt/ros/groovy/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

If you have more than one ROS distribution installed, ~/.bashrc must only source the setup.bash for the version you are currently using.

If you just want to change the environment of your current shell, you can type:

source /opt/ros/groovy/setup.bash

Getting rosinstall

rosinstall is a frequently used command-line tool in ROS that is distributed separately. It enables you to easily download many source trees for ROS packages with one command.

To install this tool on Ubuntu, run:

sudo apt-get install python-rosinstall

Tutorials

Now, to test your installation, please proceed to the ROS Tutorials.