The catkin plugin

The catkin plugin is useful when building ROS 1 parts.

Plugin-specific features and syntax are dependent on which base is being used, as outlined below:

• base: core20
• base: core18 | core

This plugin uses the common plugin keywords as well as those for “sources”. For more information, see Snapcraft parts metadata.

base: core20

For core20, this plugin is designed to work with the ROS 1 Noetic extension. If not using this extension, it is required to set the ROS_DISTRO environment variable to noetic using build-environment.

This plugin enables the following plugin-specific keywords on core20:

Additionally, this plugin uses the following plugin-specific keywords:

• catkin-packages (list of strings)
  List of catkin packages to build. If not specified, all packages in the
  workspace will be built. If set to an empty list ([]), no packages will
  be built, which could be useful if you only want ROS debs in the snap.

• catkin-packages-ignore (list of strings)
  List of catkin packages to ignore (i.e. not build or install). If not specified or set to an empty list ([]), no packages will be ignored.

• catkin-cmake-args (list of strings)
  Arguments to pass to cmake projects.

base: core | core18

For core, this plugin is designed to work with the ROS Kinetic distro.

For core18, this plugin is designed to work with the ROS Melodic distro.

This plugin enables the following plugin-specific keywords on core|core18:

• catkin-packages (list of strings)
  List of catkin packages to build. If not specified, all packages in the
  workspace will be built. If set to an empty list ([]), no packages will
  be built.
• source-space (string)
  The source space containing Catkin packages. By default this is src.
• include-roscore (boolean)
  Whether or not to include roscore with the part. Defaults to true.
• rosinstall-files (list of strings)
  List of rosinstall files to merge while pulling. Paths are relative to
  the source.
• recursive-rosinstall (boolean)
  Whether or not to recursively merge/update rosinstall files from fetched
  sources. Will continue until all rosinstall files have been merged.
  Defaults to false.
• catkin-cmake-args (list of strings)
  Configure flags to pass onto the cmake invocation from catkin.
• underlay (object)
  Used to inform Snapcraft that this snap isn’t standalone, and is actually
  overlaying a workspace from another snap via content sharing. Made up of
  two properties:
  • build-path (string)
    Build-time path to existing workspace to underlay the one being built,
    for example $SNAPCRAFT_STAGE/opt/ros/kinetic.
  • run-path (string)
    Run-time path of the underlay workspace (e.g. a subdirectory of the
    content interface’s ‘target’ attribute.)
• catkin-ros-master-uri (string)
  The URI to ros master setting the env variable ROS_MASTER_URI. Defaults
  to http://localhost:11311.

See the catkin-tools plugin plugin for additional methods for building ROS 1 parts. Also see the colcon plugin for building ROS 2 parts.

For a simple example, see ROS applications, or search GitHub for projects already using the plugin.