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Introduction

CCWS is a development environment for ROS, which integrates functionality of traditional catkin workspaces and CI pipelines in order to facilitate (cross-)compilation, testing, linting, documetation and binary package generation. It is intended to be used both as a CI/CD backbone and a working environment for developers. Note that CCWS is not intended to be a complete solution, but rather a basis for development of a vendor-specific workflow.

CCWS is ROS version agnostic, and should work in most cases for both ROS1 and ROS2.

Features

  • Build profiles -- sets of configurations for build process, e.g., cmake toolchain, colcon configuration, environment variables, etc. Profiles do not conflict with each other and can be used in parallel without using separate clones of the workspace and packages.

  • Execution profiles -- simple shell mixins that are intended to modify run time environment, e.g., execute nodes in valgrind, alter node crash handling, etc.

  • A number of features implemented via build profiles:

  • Package template which demonstrates how to use some of the features.

  • The number of parallel jobs can be selected based on available RAM instead of CPU cores, since RAM is likely to be the limiting factor.

  • Based entirely on make and shell scripts. All scripts and configurations are kept in the workspace and easy to adjust for specific needs.

Build profiles

Profile configurations are located in ccws/profiles/build, common subdirectory contains default parameters, which can be overriden by specific profiles:

  • [default] reldebug -- default compiler, cmake build type is RelWithDebInfo
  • scan_build -- static checks with scan_build and clang-tidy. clang-tidy parameters are defined in cmake toolchain and must be enabled in packages as shown in package template CMakeLists. This profile also uses clang compiler.
  • thread_sanitizer -- compilation with thread sanitizer.
  • addr_undef_sanitizers -- compilation with address and undefined behavior sanitizers.
  • static_checks -- static checkers and their configuration.
  • doxygen -- doxygen and its configuration.
  • cross_raspberry_pi -- cross-compilation for Raspberry Pi.
  • cross_jetson_xavier -- cross-compilation for Jetson Xavier.
  • cross_jetson_nano -- cross-compilation for Jetson Nano.
  • clangd -- collects compilation commands for a given BASE_BUILD_PROFILE and generates clangd configuration file in the workspace root.
  • deb -- debian package generation (see below).

Execution profiles

Execution profiles set environment variables that can be used in launch scripts to alter run time behavior as demonstrated in ccws/pkg_template/catkin/launch/bringup.launch, currently available profiles are:

  • common -- a set of common ROS parameters, e.g., ROS_HOME, it is automatically included in binary packages.
  • test -- sets CCWS_NODE_CRASH_ACTION variable so that nodes that respect it become required, i.e., termination of such nodes would result in crash of test scripts and can thus be easily detected.
  • valgrind -- sets CCWS_NODE_LAUNCH_PREFIX to valgrind and some variables that control behavior of valgrind.
  • core_pattern -- sets core pattern to save core files in the artifacts directory.
  • address_sanitizer -- helper for addr_undef_sanitizers profile.

Execution profiles have no effect on build process and are taken into account in *test* targets or debian packages. test execution profile is always used in tests and additional profiles can be provided with EXEC_PROFILE="<profile1> <profile2>". These targets load profiles using setup.bash script located in the root folder of CCWS, which can also be used manually, e.g., source setup.bash [<build_profile> [<exec_profile1> ...]]. Note that the setup script always includes common profile, and uses test execution profile if no other execution profiles are specified.

Dependencies

Dependencies can be installed using make bp_install_build BUILD_PROFILE=<profile>, which is going to install the following tools and profile specific dependencies:

Usage

See .ccws/test_main.mk for command usage hints.

Initial setup

  • Override developer and vendor specific parameters by adding them to make/config.mk, available parameters can be found in the top section of Makefile.
  • Install dependencies using make bp_install_build BUILD_PROFILE=<profile> targets, cross compilation profiles would require some extra steps as described below. In some minimalistic environments you may need to run ./ccws/scripts/bootstrap.sh before using bp_install_build target in order to install make and other utils.
  • Clone packages in src subdirectory, or create new using make new PKG=<pkg>.

Compilation

  • make build PKG="<pkg>" where <pkg> is one or more space separated package names.
  • make <pkg> -- a shortcut for make build, but <pkg> can be a substring of package name. All packages matching the given substring will be built.
  • The number of jobs can be overriden with JOBS=X parameter.
  • make build PKG=<pkg> BUILD_PROFILE=scan_build overrides default profile.

Running

  • Source setup.bash <profile> to be able to use packages. Setup scripts generated by colcon can also be used directly, e.g., install/<profile>/local_setup.sh, but in this case some of CCWS functionality won't be available.

Testing

  • make test PKG=<pkg> test with colcon, or make wstest to test all.
  • make ctest PKG=<pkg> bypass colcon and run ctest directly or make wsctest to test all.

Documentation

  • make BUILD_PROFILE=doxygen, firefox artifacts/doxygen/index.html

Debian package generation

Overview

CCWS takes a somewhat uncommon approach to binary package generation which is a middle ground between traditional ROS (1 package = 1 deb) and docker containers: all packages built in the workspace are packed together into a single debian 'superpackage'. Unlike bloom CCWS generates binary packages directly instead of generating source packages first.

Binary package generation is implemented as a build profile mixin that can be overlayed over an arbitrary build profile: make <pkg> BUILD_PROFILE=deb BASE_BUILD_PROFILE=reldebug.

CCWS approach has a number of advantages:

  • Binary compatibility issues are minimized compared to traditional ROS approach:

    • no need to worry about compatibilities between multiple standalone binary packages and perform ABI checks;

    • if base ROS packages are included, it is also possible to avoid binary incompatibilities between syncs of the same ROS release (those actually happen).

  • Package repository management can be sloppier compared to ROS when it comes to tags, versions, git submodules, etc, e.g., there is no need to maintain release repos for all packages.

  • Debian 'superpackages' are easier to handle than both standalone packages and docker containers, e.g., they can be generated by developers from their working branches and easily copied and installed on the target.

  • Debian packages have some advantages over docker containers in general:

    • Zero overhead during execution.

    • Straightforward access to hardware.

    • Easy installation of system services, udev rules, configs, etc.

  • Different versions of binary packages can be installed simultaneously, if they are built using different VERSION parameters.

Building packages

Generally, it is necessary to install packages to the filesystem root during compilation in order to get all paths right in catkin cmake files and properly install system files. CCWS avoids this using proot similarly to cross-compilation profiles.

Cross-compilation

Here <profile> stands for cross_raspberry_pi, cross_jetson_xavier, cross_jetson_nano. Cross-compilation make targets can be found in ccws/make/cross.mk and ccws/profiles/<profile>/targets.mk

Note on cross_jetson_xavier and cross_jetson_nano: these profiles require Ubuntu 18.04 / ROS melodic and install nvcc, you may want to do this in a container.

The general workflow is documented below, for more technical details see ccws/doc/cross-compilation.md and CCWS CI test in .ccws/test_cross.mk:

  1. Install profile dependencies with make bp_install_build BUILD_PROFILE=<profile>
  2. Obtain system image:
    • cross_raspberry_pi -- bp_install_build target automatically downloads standard image;
    • cross_jetson_xavier, cross_jetson_nano -- CCWS does not obtain these images automatically, you have to manualy copy system partition image to ccws/profiles/cross_jetson_xavier/system.img.
  3. Initialize source repositories:
    • make wsinit REPOS="https://github.com/asherikov/staticoma.git"
    • [when building all ROS packages] add ROS dependencies of all your packages to the workspace make dep_to_repolist ROS_DISTRO=melodic, or a specific package make dep_to_repolist PKG=<pkg> ROS_DISTRO=melodic;
    • fetch all packages make wsupdate.
  4. Install system dependencies of packages in your workspace to the system image: make cross_install PKG=staticoma BUILD_PROFILE=<profile> ROS_DISTRO=<distro>
  5. Compile packages:
    • mount sysroot with make cross_mount BUILD_PROFILE=<profile>
    • build packages, e.g. make staticoma BUILD_PROFILE=<profile> or build and generate deb package make deb PKG=staticoma BUILD_PROFILE=<profile>
    • unmount sysroot when done with make cross_umount BUILD_PROFILE=<profile>

Using CCWS docker

A docker image with preinstalled CCWS and dependencies is available for testing, but it is recommended to build a tailored image using ccws/examples/Dockerfile as an example.

The image can be used in the following way:

  • docker pull asherikov/ccws
  • mkdir tmp_ws # sources, build, install, cache will go here
  • docker run --rm -ti -v ./tmp_ws:/ccws/workspace asherikov/ccws bash
  • make wsinit REPOS="https://github.com/asherikov/qpmad.git"
  • ...

Extending CCWS

CCWS functionality can be extended in multiple ways:

  • by adding new build profiles, e.g., make bp_new BUILD_PROFILE=vendor_static_checks BASE_BUILD_PROFILE=static_checks, all profiles starting with vendor prefix are ignored by git;
  • by adding execution profiles;
  • make targets can be added by creating a ccws/profiles/build/vendor/<filename>.mk file;
  • common cmake toolchain suffix can be added to ccws/profiles/build/vendor/toolchain_suffix.cmake.

Known issues

  • Segmentation fault during cross-compilation or debian package generation indside docker containers (both require proot): presumably due to seccomp Linux feature, which can be disabled with --security-opt seccomp:unconfined docker parameter. Disabling seccomp for proot with PROOT_NO_SECCOMP=1 seems to be unnecessary.

  • Programs compiled with sanitizers (addr_undef_sanitizers or thread_sanitizer build profiles) output 2: AddressSanitizer:DEADLYSIGNAL or FATAL: ThreadSanitizer: unexpected memory mapping when executed: the reason is tightened memory security with ASLR (address space layout randomization) in modern Linux kernels, see google/sanitizers#1614. The issue can be alleviated by setting sudo sysctl vm.mmap_rnd_bits=28.

  • Some of ROS2 core packages cannot be built with CCWS due to cmake misuse, e.g., see ament/google_benchmark_vendor#17.

  • proot segfault while building on arm64 in Ubuntu 22, e.g., while building debian packages. Newer version of proot has to be used, see proot-me/proot#312.

Related software

TODO