Migration to ROS2

[magnusmusngi]

Hi,

I am planning to switch from ROS1 to ROS2. Seeing that ROS_VERSION is checked in some of the CMakeLists.txt, aside from updating my current mc_rtc_ticker.cpp to compile with ROS2, what other steps should I do for the migration? I am using v1.5.0 for mc_rtc_ros, and v2.11.0 for mc_rtc by the way.

Thank you

[arntanguy]

Hi,

As far as mc_rtc itself is concerned, both ROS1 and ROS2 are now fully supported:

• The ROS plugin of mc_rtc is compatible with both ROS2 and ROS1 (responsible for publishing the state of the robot for visualization purposes)
• The rviz panel has been fully ported. See Add ROS2 support and remove obsolete tools #40
• The tools such as mc_rtc_ticker, mc_convex_visualization, mc_surface_visualization, etc have also been integrated in mc_rtc and made ros-free. See Introduce tools to display surfaces and convex mc_rtc#431

I'm not sure what you mean by your mc_rtc_ticker.cpp, but if you use the official one, everything is supported as-is.

The only other steps would be:

• Update your robot description package to support ROS2. You can have a look at https://github.com/jrl-umi3218/jvrc_description to get an example. Essentially this involves updating the package.xml to support ROS2 syntax and ament_cmake, and updating the CMakeList.txt to make it an ament package and properly export the path to the robot description package.
• Update your own code to support ROS2

Note that currently mc_rtc_ros_control has not been ported.