Using Docker with VS Code & ROS

Running on 18.04 or Windows, and need to build code in ROS-kinetic? Here’s how you do it.

Acknowledgements

Erdal from Erdal’s blog helped inspire this guide. I wanted to keep things a little more generic, and also use ROS-kinetic with catkin build tools for this example.

What You Need

Pre-reqs:

Linux: Docker CE/EE 18.06+ and Docker Compose 1.21+. The snap version in Ubuntu 18.04 won’t do! Trust me, I’ve tried.
Windows Docker Desktop 2.0+

Directory Structure

First make a directory structure somewhere on your computer like so. If you’re using windows, preferably don’t use your C: drive, but you can if you have to.

 catkin_ws    
 │
 └───src
 |    │___your_ros_pkgs
 |    │   
 |    │
 |    └───docker-setup.sh
 | 
 |
 |____.devcontainer 
         |
         |__devcontainer.json
         |
         |__Dockerfile

Don’t worry about what docker-setup.sh, .devcontainer are for now. Just create the .devcontainer, src folders. Go ahead and drop whatever ROS Pkgs you have in src too.

VSCode

Go ahead and download the Remote Development Extension:

Create a devcontainer.json file in the .devcontainer folder that looks something like this:

     {
         "name": "catkin-workspace",
         "dockerFile": "Dockerfile",
         "extensions": [
             "ms-vscode.cpptools",
             "ms-iot.vscode-ros"
         ],
         "runArgs": [
             "--cap-add=SYS_PTRACE",
             "--security-opt", "seccomp=unconfined",
             "-v",
             "${env:HOME}${env:USERPROFILE}/.ssh:/root/.ssh"
         ],
         "settings": {
             "terminal.integrated.shell.linux": "/bin/bash"
         },
         "postCreateCommand": "bash /catkin_ws/src/docker-setup.sh",
         "workspaceMount": "src=path/to/catkin_ws/src/,dst=/catkin_ws/src/,type=bind,consistency=cached",
         "workspaceFolder": "/catkin_ws"
}

Don’t forget to change “/path/to”!!

Docker

Create a Dockerfilealso in .devcontainer that looks something like this:

 FROM ros:kinetic-ros-base

 RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -q -y \
 python-catkin-tools python-pip
 RUN rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists # good practice.

 RUN echo 'source /opt/ros/$ROS_DISTRO/setup.bash' >> /root/.bashrc

Now we also need to make sure we install the dependencies for your SRC folder. We will use a script that runs when setting up your container. Go ahead add a docker-setup.sh into the src folder with the following below:
```
     rosdep install -y -r --from-path /catkin_ws/
```

Ready to build the container!

Open up VS code, and open the catkin_ws folder. VS code should now detect the .devcontainer folder, and will ask you if you want to reopen this in a container. Go ahead and reopen it.
It’ll take a little bit to build. After it builds, go ahead and add a .vscode folder if there isn’t one already. Note that you must use the vscode app.

Once you create the folder, go ahead and add these three files settings.json, c_cpp_properties.json, tasks.json:

 //settings.json
     {
         "terminal.integrated.shellArgs.linux": [
             "-l",
             "-i"
         ],
         "ros.distro": "kinetic",
         "python.linting.enabled": true,
         "python.autoComplete.extraPaths": [
             "/golfcart_ws/devel/lib/python2.7/dist-packages",
             "/opt/ros/kinetic/lib/python2.7/dist-packages"
         ],
         "python.linting.pylintArgs": [
             "--init-hook"]
     }

 //c_cpp_properties.json
 {
 "configurations": [
     {
         "browse": {
             "databaseFilename": "",
             "limitSymbolsToIncludedHeaders": true
         },
         "includePath": [
             "/golfcart_ws/devel/include/**",
             "/opt/ros/kinetic/include/**",
             "/usr/include/**"
         ],
         "name": "ROS",
         "intelliSenseMode": "gcc-x64",
         "compilerPath": "/usr/bin/gcc",
         "cStandard": "c11",
         "cppStandard": "c++11"
             }
         ],
         "version": 4
     }

 //tasks.json
 {
 // See https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=733558
 // for the documentation about the tasks.json format
 "version": "2.0.0",
 "tasks": [
     {
         "label": "catkin build",
         "type": "shell",
         "command": "catkin build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON -DCMAKE_CXX_STANDARD=11",
         "problemMatcher": [],
         "group": {
             "kind": "build",
             "isDefault": true
         }
     },
     {
         "label": "catkin run_tests",
         "type": "shell",
         "command": "catkin run_tests",
         "problemMatcher": [],
         "group": {
             "kind": "test",
             "isDefault": true
                 }
             },
         ]
     }

Now all you gotta do is build it! Press Crtl + Shift + B and watch the magic happen!