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Herb Kuta edited this page May 23, 2019 · 25 revisions

OpenEmbedded Build Instructions

Revision: 4 Published: 2019-06-01

These instructions are for building ROS 2 crystal using OpenEmbedded morty on Ubuntu bionic.

Although recipes for dashing appear in meta-ros, ros-core doesn't yet build. When it does, conf/ros2-dashing.mcf and conf/webos-dashing.mcf will be added.

The migration to OpenEmbedded thud is expected to be completed by the end of 2019-06.

Build Environment Setup

  • Setup bitbake and OE-Core using a separate disk for the Yocto build artifacts (~100GB required).

    # Prerequisites
sudo apt-get install gawk wget git-core diffstat unzip texinfo gcc-multilib \
        build-essential chrpath socat cpio python python3-pip python3-pexpect \
        xz-utils debianutils iputils-ping \
        g++-multilib locales lsb-release python3-distutils time
sudo locale-gen en_US.utf8

# Set up the build tree
dir=/absolute/path/to/directory/on/separate/disk
mkdir -p $dir/BUILD
ln -snf $dir/BUILD build
mkdir conf
ln -snf $PWD/conf build/.

# The branch for OpenEmbedded "thud" is not yet available. In the meantime, use a draft of the branch for "morty".
git clone -b morty-draft [email protected]:ros/meta-ros
cp meta-ros/files/*.mcf conf/.

# Select one based on the DISTRO you wish to build:
# cfg=conf/ros2-crystal.mcf
# cfg=conf/webos-crystal.mcf
meta-ros/scripts/mcf -f $cfg

source openembedded-core/oe-init-build-env
# The current directory is now $dir/BUILD, return to the original.
cd -

  • Add this to the bottom of conf/local.conf:

    #
# Local additions
#

# Uncomment this if you configured with ros2-crystal.mcf:
# DISTRO = "ros2"
# Uncomment this if you configured with webos-crystal.mcf:
# DISTRO = "webos"

# Uncomment one:
# MACHINE = "qemux86"
# MACHINE = "raspberrypi3"

ROS_YOCTO_ARTIFACTS = "/absolute/path/to/directory/on/separate/disk"

DL_DIR = "${ROS_YOCTO_ARTIFACTS}/downloads"
SSTATE_DIR = "${ROS_YOCTO_ARTIFACTS}/sstate-cache"
TMPDIR = "${ROS_YOCTO_ARTIFACTS}/BUILD/tmp"

# As recommended by https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/2.6.2/mega-manual/mega-manual.html#var-BB_NUMBER_THREADS
# and https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/2.6.2/mega-manual/mega-manual.html#var-PARALLEL_MAKE
BB_NUMBER_THREADS = "${@min(int(bb.utils.cpu_count()), 20)}"
PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j ${BB_NUMBER_THREADS}"

# Special setting for "pcl" -- see meta-ros/recipes-extended/pcl/pcl_1.8.1.bb
PARALLEL_MAKE_pn-pcl = "-j <ROUND(<RAM-in-GB>/5)>"

Building Images

DISTRO = ros2 Images

core-image-ros-roscore

This image contains just the ROS "core".

source openembedded-core/oe-init-build-env
cd -
bitbake core-image-ros-roscore

core-image-ros-world

By default, this image contains all of the "non-optional" ROS packages. In the future, you will be able to include "optional" ones by setting DISTRO_FEATURES in conf/local.conf.

source openembedded-core/oe-init-build-env
cd -
bitbake core-image-ros-word

DISTRO = webos Images

webos-image-ros-roscore

This webOS OSE image contains just the ROS "core".

source openembedded-core/oe-init-build-env
cd -
bitbake webos-image-ros-roscore

webos-image-ros-world

By default, this webOS OSE image contains all of the "non-optional" ROS packages. In the future, you will be able to include "optional" ones by setting DISTRO_FEATURES in conf/local.conf.

source openembedded-core/oe-init-build-env
cd -
bitbake webos-image-ros-roscore

Usage Notes

  • These images default to being non-production: the root account has no password.

  • In order to run ROS components, you must set up a ROS workspace by issuing:

    source ros_setup

Change Log

Revision 4

  • Revise for the inclusion of mcf in meta-ros.
  • Add support for using webOS OSE as the OpenEmbedded DISTRO.

Revision 3

  • Add a step to install the prerequisites.
  • Add instructions to build for Raspberry Pi.
  • Fix typo.

Revision 2

  • Drop setting SSTATE_MIRRORS because meta-ros adds global environment variables that invalidates even the shared state for native packages.
  • Specify a PARALLEL_MAKE_pn-pcl setting so that building pcl doesn't take nearly 3 hours.
  • Fix typos.

Revision 1

  • Initial publication.
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