Build and Install

Install

Nav2 and its dependencies are released as binaries. You may install it via the following to get the latest stable released version:

sudo apt install ros-<distro>-navigation2 ros-<distro>-nav2-bringup ros-<distro>-turtlebot3*

(For Ubuntu 20.04 use this command as the parsing of wildcards have been changed:

sudo apt install ros-<distro>-navigation2 ros-<distro>-nav2-bringup '~ros-<distro>-turtlebot3-.*'

Build

There are 3 ways to build Nav2. Building for a specific released distribution (e.g. foxy, galactic), build Nav2 on main branch using a quickstart setup script, or building main branch manually.

For Released Distributions

Install ROS

Please install ROS 2 via the usual install instructions for your desired distribution. Note: <ros2-distro>-devel was the branch naming schema pre-galactic. For Galactic and newer, it is simply <ros2-distro>.

Build Nav2

We’re going to create a new workspace, nav2_ws, clone our Nav2 branch into it, and build. rosdep will be used to get the dependency binaries for Nav2 in your specific distribution.

mkdir -p ~/nav2_ws/src
cd ~/nav2_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/ros-planning/navigation2.git --branch <ros2-distro>-devel
cd ~/nav2_ws
rosdep install -y -r -q --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro <ros2-distro>
colcon build --symlink-install

Note: You need to change --rosdistro to the selected ROS 2 distribution name (e.g foxy, galactic).

For Main Branch Development

Build ROS 2 Main

Build or install ROS 2 rolling using the build instructions provided in the ROS 2 documentation. All development is done using the rolling distribution on Nav2’s main branch and cherry-picked over to released distributions during syncs (if ABI compatible).

Build Nav2 Main

Now that ROS 2 rolling is installed, we have to install our dependencies and build Nav2 itself. We’ll create a new workspace, nav2_ws and clone the Nav2 project into it. Afterwards, we’ll use rosdep to automatically find and install our dependencies that were not included in the core ROS 2 install itself (behaviortree.CPP, ompl, etc). If you would like to use a custom version of any of these dependencies, simply overlay them in your nav2_ws and it will use those rather than the binary installed versions.

mkdir -p ~/nav2_ws/src
cd ~/nav2_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/ros-planning/navigation2.git --branch main
cd ~/nav2_ws
rosdep install -y -r -q --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro rolling
colcon build --symlink-install
source install/setup.bash

You are now ready for the demonstrations!

Docker

The official Dockerhub entries are primarily for use in the Nav2 CI, but they may also be used for development. It is useful to have a docker image that tracks Nav2 main branch. The Dockerfile in the root of the repository is recommended for production use, set to your distribution of choice.

It is though generally recomended to install Nav2 releases from the apt repository inside a container if you’d like to use our released binaries.

Building Docker Container

To build an image from the Dockerfile in the Nav2 folder: First, clone the repo to your local system (or see Building the source above)

sudo docker build -t nav2/latest .

If proxies are needed:

sudo docker build -t nav2/latest --build-arg http_proxy=http://proxy.my.com:### --build-arg https_proxy=http://proxy.my.com:### .

Note: You may also need to configure your docker for DNS to work. See article here for details: https://development.robinwinslow.uk/2016/06/23/fix-docker-networking-dns/

If you would like to build from dockerhub cache to speed up the build

sudo docker pull rosplanning/navigation2:main
sudo docker build -t nav2/latest --cache-from rosplanning/navigation2:main .

Using DockerHub Container

We allow for you to pull the latest docker image from the main branch at any time. As new releases and tags are made, docker containers on docker hub will be versioned as well to chose from. This docker image will not contain a built overlay, and you must build the overlay Nav2 workspace yourself (see Build Nav2 Main up above).

sudo docker pull rosplanning/navigation2:main

Generate Doxygen

Run doxygen in the root of the Nav2 repository. It will generate a /doc/* directory containing the documentation. The documentation entrypoint in a browser is index.html.