Arch Linux install of ROS Melodic

Arch Linux packages are available for the following architectures.

Version amd64 i686 arm armv6h armv7h aarch64 Arch Linux X X X X X X

Installation

Before you start

Since you'll be installing a lot of packages, it is recommended to use an AUR helper like yay or pikaur. You can find a larger more verbose list of AUR helpers within the ArchLinux wiki page for AUR helpers. This tutorial will assume the use of yay as the AUR helper.

It is also recommended to use the arch4edu repository. They are hosting many packages related to education and research, including robotics. Adding a repository allows for you to install binaries of packages, instead of compiling them from source. This will greatly speed up your installation time. Visit here to add and use arch4edu .

Installation

There are many different libraries and tools in ROS. We provided three default configurations to get you started. You can also install ROS packages individually.

Desktop-Full Install: (Recommended) : ROS, rqt, rviz, robot-generic libraries, 2D/3D simulators, navigation and 2D/3D perception yay -S ros-melodic-desktop-full Desktop Install: ROS, rqt, rviz, and robot-generic libraries yay -S ros-melodic-desktop ROS-Base: (Bare Bones) ROS package, build, and communication libraries. No GUI tools. yay -S ros-melodic-ros-base Individual Package: You can also install a specific ROS package (replace underscores with dashes of the package name): yay -S ros-melodic-PACKAGE e.g. yay -S ros-melodic-slam-gmapping



To find available packages, use:

yay -Ss ros-melodic

Initialize rosdep

Before you can use ROS, you will need to initialize rosdep . rosdep enables you to easily install system dependencies for source you want to compile and is required to run some core components in ROS.

sudo rosdep init rosdep update

Environment setup It's convenient if the ROS environment variables are automatically added to your bash session every time a new shell is launched: echo "source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc source ~/.bashrc If you have more than one ROS distribution installed, ~/.bashrc must only source the setup.bash for the version you are currently using. If you just want to change the environment of your current shell, instead of the above you can type: source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash If you use zsh instead of bash you need to run the following commands to set up your shell: echo "source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.zsh" >> ~/.zshrc source ~/.zshrc