You're reading the documentation for a version of ROS 2 that has reached its EOL (end-of-life), and is no longer officially supported. If you want up-to-date information, please have a look at Humble.
Installing ROS 2 via Debian Packages
Table of Contents
Debian packages for ROS 2 Eloquent Elusor are available for Ubuntu Bionic.
Set locale
Make sure you have a locale which supports UTF-8.
If you are in a minimal environment (such as a docker container), the locale may be something minimal like POSIX.
We test with the following settings. However, it should be fine if you’re using a different UTF-8 supported locale.
locale # check for UTF-8
sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales
sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
locale # verify settings
Setup Sources
You will need to add the ROS 2 apt repositories to your system. To do so, first authorize our GPG key with apt like this:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl gnupg2 lsb-release
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.asc | sudo apt-key add -
And then add the repository to your sources list:
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture)] http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros2-latest.list'
Install ROS 2 packages
Update your apt repository caches after setting up the repositories.
sudo apt update
Desktop Install (Recommended): ROS, RViz, demos, tutorials.
sudo apt install ros-eloquent-desktop
ROS-Base Install (Bare Bones): Communication libraries, message packages, command line tools. No GUI tools.
sudo apt install ros-eloquent-ros-base
Environment setup
Sourcing the setup script
Set up your environment by sourcing the following file.
source /opt/ros/eloquent/setup.bash
Install argcomplete (optional)
ROS 2 command line tools use argcomplete to autocompletion. So if you want autocompletion, installing argcomplete is necessary.
sudo apt install -y python3-pip
pip3 install -U argcomplete
Try some examples
If you installed ros-eloquent-desktop above you can try some examples.
In one terminal, source the setup file and then run a C++ talker:
source /opt/ros/eloquent/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker
In another terminal source the setup file and then run a Python listener:
source /opt/ros/eloquent/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_py listener
You should see the talker saying that it’s Publishing messages and the listener saying I heard those messages.
This verifies both the C++ and Python APIs are working properly.
Hooray!
Next steps after installing
Continue with the tutorials and demos to configure your environment, create your own workspace and packages, and learn ROS 2 core concepts.
Using the ROS 1 bridge
The ROS 1 bridge can connect topics from ROS 1 to ROS 2 and vice-versa. See the dedicated documentation on how to build and use the ROS 1 bridge.
Additional RMW implementations (optional)
The default middleware that ROS 2 uses is Fast-RTPS, but the middleware (RMW) can be replaced at runtime.
See the tutorial on how to work with multiple RMWs.
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting techniques can be found here.