⌚ Time to complete: 30 min

Planned outcomes

You will have a working ROS Noetic installation on your machine.

Prerequisites

To install ROS Noetic, you will need a machine with Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa) installed on it.

Steps

1. Set up sources:

   sudo sh -c 'echo "deb <http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu> $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
   

2. Set up keys:

   sudo apt install -y curl
   curl -s <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.asc> | sudo apt-key add -
   

3. Update indexes:

   sudo apt update
   

4. Install desktop version of ROS Noetic (recommended for development Robot Control Servers):

   sudo apt install -y ros-noetic-desktop-full
   

   <aside> ⏳ This will take several minutes to complete, so grab a cup of coffee in the meantime.

   </aside>

5. Add ROS setup script to your rc file.

   <aside> ℹ️ This will make ROS commands available to you in every terminal session without manual setup.

   </aside>

   # Define variables
   SHELL_NAME=$(basename $(echo $0))  # gets the name of the current shell automatically
   ROS_INIT_ENTRY="# Initialize ROS
   source /opt/ros/noetic/setup.${SHELL_NAME}"
   RC_FILE_PATH=~/.${SHELL_NAME}rc
   
   # Patch RC file (using grep to make sure that the entry is not duplicated)
   grep -xqF ${ROS_INIT_ENTRY} ${RC_FILE_PATH} || echo "\n${ROS_INIT_ENTRY}\n" >> ${RC_FILE_PATH}
   
   # Source the RC file
   source ${RC_FILE_PATH}
   

6. Install package building dependencies:

   sudo apt install -y \
     build-essential \
     python3-rosinstall \
     python3-rosinstall-generator \
     python3-wstool \
     python3-catkin-tools \
     python3-osrf-pycommon
   

7. Install and initialize rosdep:

   # Install rosdep
   sudo apt install -y python3-rosdep
   
   # Initialize rosdep
   sudo rosdep init
   rosdep update
   

8. Done! 🎉

Notes

This guide is based on the official installation tutorial from ROS wiki.