ROS Noetic Dev Container Starter

A complete, reproducible development environment for ROS Noetic Ninjemys, 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 Noetic Desktop Full pre-installed.
• GUI Support: Pre-configured for WSLg/X11 forwarding (rviz, 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.
  • Uses host networking for easy connectivity.
• 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> ros_ws
   cd ros_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
catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash

Useful Commands

• Build Workspace: Press Ctrl+Shift+B (runs catkin_make).
• Launch PlotJuggler:

rosrun plotjuggler plotjuggler

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

roslaunch foxglove_bridge foxglove_bridge.launch

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

⚙️ Configuration Notes

Network Isolation

The container uses host networking (--network=host) to simplify ROS communication.

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.