Installation Instructions for Melodic in macOS (OS X)

This page describes how to install ROS Melodic on macOS. macOS is not officially supported by ROS and the installation might fail.

Setup

Homebrew

First, go to http://brew.sh to install homebrew and install some additional software:

• $ brew update
  $ brew install cmake
  $ brew install poco  # for class_loader pkg
  $ brew install gpgme  # for rosbag_storage pkg

Add our ROS dependencies tap and the Homebrew Core tap so you can get some non-standard formulae:

• $ brew tap ros/deps
  $ brew tap osrf/simulation   # Gazebo, sdformat, and ogre
  $ brew tap homebrew/core # VTK5

$ brew untap ros/DISTRO

Setup Environment

You will need to tell Python about modules installed by Homebrew. The recommended way of doing this are the following commands:

• $ mkdir -p ~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages
  $ echo "$(brew --prefix)/lib/python2.7/site-packages" >> ~/Library/Python/2.7/lib/python/site-packages/homebrew.pth

Additional Tools

Finally, we need to install a few ROS python tools using 'pip'.

$ sudo -H python -m pip install -U pip  # update pip

Install the following packages using 'pip':

• $ sudo -H pip install -U defusedxml empy pycryptodome
  $ sudo -H pip install -U wxPython  # install python-wxtools
  $ sudo -H pip install -U wstool rosdep rosinstall rosinstall_generator rospkg catkin-pkg

Initializing rosdep

• $ sudo -H rosdep init
  $ rosdep update

$ rosinstall_generator robot --rosdistro melodic --deps --tar > melodic-robot.rosinstall
$ vcs import src < melodic-robot.rosinstall

Modify Some CMake Config Files

Now you will modify four CMake configuration files to avoid some compile and linker issues on MacOS.

Edit the files src/ros_comm/rosbag/CMakeLists.txt and src/ros_comm/rosbag_storage/CMakeLists.txt by adding the lines below. Where you put it doesn’t really matter.. you can just insert them after the project(“package_name”) line at the top of the file.

• # Default to C++14
  if(NOT CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD)
    set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14)
  endif()
  
  if(APPLE)
    # Workaround to find missing libraries
    include_directories("/usr/local/opt/openssl/include")
    link_directories("/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib")
    link_directories("/usr/local/lib")  # GPGME library
  endif()

Edit the file src/ros_comm/message_filters/CMakeLists.txt by removing the Boost.Signals package dependency. Look for the line:

• find_package(Boost REQUIRED COMPONENTS signals thread)

and change it to:

• find_package(Boost REQUIRED COMPONENTS thread)

Edit the file src/ros_comm/roscpp/CMakeLists.txt by removing the Boost.Signals package dependency. Look for the line:

• find_package(Boost REQUIRED COMPONENTS chrono filesystem signals system)

and change it to:

• find_package(Boost REQUIRED COMPONENTS chrono filesystem system)

Resolving Dependencies

Before you can build your catkin workspace you need to make sure that you have all the required dependencies. We use the rosdep tool for this:

• $ rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro melodic -y --skip-keys google-mock

This will look at all of the packages in the src directory and find all of the dependencies they have. Then it will recursively install the dependencies.

The --from-paths option indicates we want to install the dependencies for an entire directory of packages, in this case src. The --ignore-src option indicates to rosdep that it shouldn't try to install any ROS packages in the src folder from the package manager, we don't need it to since we are building them ourselves. The --rosdistro option is required because we don't have a ROS environment setup yet, so we have to indicate to rosdep what version of ROS we are building for. The -y option indicates to rosdep that we don't want to be bothered by too many prompts from the package manager. The --skip-keys option suppresses some dependency error messages.

After a while (and maybe some prompts for your password) rosdep will finish installing system dependencies and you can continue.

ERROR: the following packages/stacks could not have their rosdep keys resolved to system dependencies:  

roslisp: No definition of [python3-mock] for OS [osx]  
rosbag: No definition of [python-gnupg] for OS [osx]  
rosbag_storage: No definition of [libgpgme-dev] for OS [osx]

Building the catkin Workspace

Once it has completed downloading the packages and resolving the dependencies you are ready to build the catkin packages. We will use the catkin_make_isolated command because there are both catkin and plain cmake packages in the base install, when developing on your catkin only workspaces you may choose to use catkin/commands/catkin_make which only works with catkin packages.

Invoke catkin_make_isolated:

• $ ./src/catkin/bin/catkin_make_isolated --install -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_MACOSX_RPATH=ON -DCMAKE_INSTALL_RPATH=$HOME/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/lib

Now the packages should have been installed to ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated or to wherever you specified with the --install-space argument. If you look in that directory you will see that a setup.bash file have been generated. To utilize the things installed there simply source that file like so:

• $ source ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash

Maintaining a Source Checkout

If we want to keep our source checkout up to date, we will have to periodically update our rosinstall file, download the latest sources, and rebuild our workspace.

Update the workspace

To update your workspace, first move your existing rosinstall file so that it doesn't get overwritten, and generate an updated version. For simplicity, we will cover the *destop-full* variant. For other variants, update the filenames and rosinstall_generator arguments appropriately.

$ mv -i melodic-desktop-full.rosinstall melodic-desktop-full.rosinstall.old
$ rosinstall_generator desktop_full --rosdistro melodic --deps --tar > melodic-desktop-full.rosinstall

Then, compare the new rosinstall file to the old version to see which packages will be updated:

$ diff -u melodic-desktop-full.rosinstall melodic-desktop-full.rosinstall.old

If you're satisfied with these changes, incorporate the new rosinstall file into the workspace and update your workspace:

$ wstool merge -t src melodic-desktop-full.rosinstall
$ wstool update -t src

Rebuild your workspace

Now that the workspace is up to date with the latest sources, rebuild it:

$ ./src/catkin/bin/catkin_make_isolated --install

Once your workspace has been rebuilt, you should source the setup files again:

$ source ~/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash

Troubleshooting

Free to add any tips or workarounds found for installing Melodic on macOS. Troubleshooting from previous releases of ROS are located here:

• http://wiki.ros.org/kinetic/Installation/OSX/Homebrew/Source#Troubleshooting

'No definition of [google-mock] for OS [osx]' error during rosdep install

Add --skip-keys google-mock to rosdep install

empy fails

sudo pip install empy

‘ImportError: No module named Crypto’

sudo pip install pycryptodome

DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH Problems

Rerun catkin_make_isolated with the CMAKE_MACOSX_RPATH and CMAKE_INSTALL_RPATH flags.

• cd ~/ros_catkin_ws
  ./src/catkin/bin/catkin_make_isolated --install -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_MACOSX_RPATH=ON -DCMAKE_INSTALL_RPATH=$HOME/ros_catkin_ws/install_isolated/lib