ros_comm (Rapyuta Fork)

Forked from ros/ros_comm to maintain patches for ROS Noetic after its upstream EOL (May 2025).

Upstream sync: This fork is synced with ros/ros_comm:noetic-devel up to the final release (1.17.4, EOL notice commit 30483a9).

Patches

Fix: roscpp PollManager busy loop on unexpected UDP traffic (#2166)

On Noetic (and Melodic), every roscpp node opens a UDP server socket at startup and registers it with PollManager for read polling. However, TransportUDP::socketUpdate only reads data when read_cb_ is set — which is not the case for nodes that don't actively use UDPROS subscriptions.

If any unexpected UDP traffic arrives on that port, the data sits unread in the kernel buffer, causing poll() to return immediately on every iteration. This turns PollManager::threadFunc into a busy loop consuming 100% CPU on one thread.

Fix: When POLLIN fires but no read_cb_ is registered, the socket data is now drained and discarded, preventing the busy loop.

Affected file: clients/roscpp/src/libros/transport/transport_udp.cpp

Building the Patched Docker Image

This repo uses a multi-stage Dockerfile to keep the final image slim:

1. Builder stage (ubuntu:focal) — installs ROS Noetic + build tools, compiles this fork's ros_comm packages into a clean install prefix.
2. Runtime stage (quay.io/rapyuta/ros:noetic, ~935MB) — copies only the patched binaries/libraries/Python packages on top of the existing slim base image.

The result is an image of ~950MB (vs 2.35GB for a single-stage build), making it a drop-in replacement for quay.io/rapyuta/ros:noetic.

Prerequisites

• Docker (>= 20.10)
• Docker Compose v2

Quick Start

# Build the image
docker compose build noetic

# Run a shell
docker compose run --rm noetic bash

# Or build directly
docker build -f docker/Dockerfile \
  --build-arg UBUNTU_DISTRO=focal \
  --build-arg ROS_DISTRO=noetic \
  -t rapyuta/ros:noetic-patched .

Using as a Base Image

Drop-in replacement for quay.io/rapyuta/ros:noetic in downstream Dockerfiles:

# Before (in e.g. rr_io_amr/docker/base.Dockerfile):
# FROM quay.io/rapyuta/ros:noetic
# After:
FROM rapyuta/ros:noetic-patched

# Everything else stays the same — same layout, same paths

Extending for Jammy

The Dockerfile is parameterized with UBUNTU_DISTRO and ROS_DISTRO build args. To add support for a Jammy-based image in the future:

1. Uncomment the jammy service in docker-compose.yaml.
2. Adjust ROS_DISTRO to the target distribution (e.g., humble for ROS 2, or a community Noetic port).
3. If the target ROS distro uses a different apt repository URL, update the repository setup section in docker/Dockerfile (consider a build-arg or conditional for the repo URL).

CI

The GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/build-noetic.yaml) automatically:

• On PR: Builds the Docker image to verify compilation.
• On push to main: Builds and pushes to GitHub Container Registry (ghcr.io) tagged as noetic-patched.
• On tags (v*): Pushes with semver-based tags.

License

BSD — same as upstream ros_comm.