Deployment

Mark Nodes for Installation

In order for a node to be installed to the robot with the pal_deploy tool, they have to be marked for installation. This means the CMakeLists.txt of the node has to contain

install(TARGETS name_of_node
        RUNTIME DESTINATION
        ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_BIN_DESTINATION})

If you also have launch files, in order for them to be installed as well include:

install(DIRECTORY launch/
        DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_SHARE_DESTINATION}/launch)

Deploy Node to ARI

In order to deploy a node to the robot that you have working on your local workspace in the docker image from pal, you can run from the workspace folder:

rosrun pal_deploy deploy.py ari

This will deploy all the packages in the workspace. If you want to deploy a single package, run

rosrun pal_deploy deploy.py ari -p name_of_package

Add Nodes to Startup

PAL provides a node which handles startup of nodes. In order to add our own nodes to startup, create a file called node_name.yaml in the directory /home/pal/.pal/pal_startup/apps/ with the content:

roslaunch: "package_name launch_file.launch"
dependencies: []

The dependencies list are other such apps in the same folder, and you would name them without the .yaml suffix, such as

roslaunch: "package_name launch_file.launch"
dependencies: ["node_name_2"]

Then, after having created the .yaml file for the package launch, you must add it to the control group launch. To do this, go to the directory /home/pal/.pal/pal_startup/control/ and either create a new .yaml file, to create a new launch group, or edit an existing one. There, simply add a line containing

`

• node_name `

which is the name of the .yaml file created, without the .yaml suffix. Next time the robot boots, the node will launch.

See the official docs here. Note that ~/.pal/pal_startup/, apps/, and control/ might not exist in which case you can just create them yourself.