Are there any example repos that show how to build on top of this?

[lexi-brt]

I want to start building some ros2 nodes in rust, but it would be really helpful to see another project that has examples of how to set it all up. I know there are examples in this repo, but it would be more helpful to see an entirely separate project so that it would be more clear how dependencies on this are linked in.

[nnmm]

Hi lexi-brt, we'll move the examples over to a new example repo soon, but basically the setup is similar to the one described here: https://github.com/ros2-rust/ros2_rust#sounds-great-how-can-i-try-this-out

That is, you need to:

• have dependencies installed (ROS 2, clang, cargo-ament-build, colcon-cargo, colcon-ros-cargo)
• add the https://github.com/ros2/rosidl_defaults.git repo, the rosidl_generator_rs package from ros2-rust and all message packages you want to build to your workspace (this will hopefully not be necessary anymore in the future)
• source the ROS 2 installation
• run colcon build

This will build using the rclrs version published on crates.io. If you clone rclrs into your workspace, it will use that one instead – useful if you want to use features that have not yet landed in the crates.io releases.

If you try it out and you encounter any obstacles, let me know!

[keenanjohnson]

Hey @lexi-brt ! I had the same question / desire as you when I stumbled accross this project, so I created this: https://github.com/keenanjohnson/ros2_rust_workspace

It's not perfect and I'm sure there are lots of improvements you can see, but hopefully it's helpful to you as something of a starting place that shows how you would pull in the ros2_rust repo as a submodule, and build your own workspace, etc.

[lexi-brt]

@keenanjohnson This is awesome! Thank you!

Does ros2_rust have to live in the same workspace as my package? Is there a way to keep it in it's own space and source it in the same way that you source foxy before building your own workspace?

[nnmm]

Yes, you can check out ros2_rust somewhere else, build it, and source install/setup.bash, then continue working in your workspace.

[keenanjohnson]

@lexi-brt if keeping ros2_rust in a seperate workspace as part of the docker file in the project I linked above makes more sense from your perspective, I think that could be a great contribution you could make if interested to https://github.com/keenanjohnson/ros2_rust_workspace