ROS 2 Humble Dev Container Starter

A complete, reproducible development environment for ROS 2 Humble Hawksbill, powered by VS Code Dev Containers and Docker.

This template is optimized for WSLg (Windows Subsystem for Linux GUI) but works on native Linux hosts as well.

🚀 Features

• ROS 2 Humble Desktop Full pre-installed.
• GUI Support: Pre-configured for WSLg/X11 forwarding (rviz2, gazebo, rqt).
• Modern Tools Included:
  • Foxglove Bridge: Connect Foxglove Studio directly to your container.
  • PlotJuggler: The best time-series visualization tool for ROS.
• Safe Defaults:
  • Non-root user (ros) setup.
  • ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY=1 enabled by default for isolated simulations.
• VS Code Integration: Pre-configured extensions (C++, Python, CMake, ROS) and build tasks.

📋 Prerequisites

1. Docker Desktop (Windows/Mac) or Docker Engine (Linux).
2. Visual Studio Code.
3. Dev Containers extension for VS Code.

Windows Users: Ensure you are using WSL 2. WSLg is included in Windows 10 build 19044+ or Windows 11.

🛠️ Quick Start

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone <your-repo-url> ros2_ws
   cd ros2_ws

2. Open the folder in VS Code (code .).
3. When prompted, click "Reopen in Container" (or press F1 -> Dev Containers: Reopen in Container).
4. Wait for the image to build.
5. Open a terminal inside VS Code. It is ready to use!

📦 Workspace Setup

Once inside the container, create your workspace structure (if not present):

mkdir -p src
colcon build
source install/setup.bash

Useful Commands

• Build Workspace: Press Ctrl+Shift+B (runs colcon build --symlink-install).
• Launch PlotJuggler:

ros2 run plotjuggler plotjuggler

• Enable Foxglove Studio: Run the VS Code Task "foxglove: start bridge" or run manually:

ros2 launch foxglove_bridge foxglove_bridge_launch.xml

Then open Foxglove Studio on your host and connect to ws://localhost:8765.

⚙️ Configuration Notes

Network Isolation

By default, the container is set to Localhost Only.

• ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY=1: Nodes only talk within the container.
• ROS_DOMAIN_ID=0: Default domain.

To connect to a physical robot on your network:

1. Open .devcontainer/devcontainer.json.
2. Set "ROS_LOCALHOST_ONLY": "0".
3. Change ROS_DOMAIN_ID to match your robot's ID.
4. Rebuild the container.

User Permissions

The container runs as a non-root user (ros) with sudo privileges. Files created in the mounted workspace will belong to your host user ID (mapped automatically), preventing permission issues on your host machine.