The colcon plugin

The colcon plugin is useful when building ROS 2 parts that use colcon.

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 2 Foxy extension. If not using this extension, it is required to set the ROS_DISTRO environment variable to foxy using build-environment.

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

• colcon-ament-cmake-args (list of strings)
  Arguments to pass to ament_cmake packages. Note that any arguments here that
  match colcon arguments need to be prefixed with a space. This can be done by
  quoting each argument with a leading space.
• colcon-catkin-cmake-args (list of strings)
  Arguments to pass to catkin packages. Note that any arguments here which match
  colcon arguments need to be prefixed with a space. This can be done by quoting
  each argument with a leading space.
• colcon-cmake-args (list of strings)
  Arguments to pass to cmake projects. Note that any arguments here which match
  colcon arguments need to be prefixed with a space. This can be done by quoting
  each argument with a leading space.
• colcon-packages (list of strings)
  List of colcon 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.
• colcon-packages-ignore (list of strings)
  List of packages for colcon to ignore.

base: core18

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

• colcon-packages (list of strings)
  List of colcon 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.
• colcon-source-space (string)
  The source space containing colcon packages (defaults to src).
• colcon-rosdistro (string)
  The ROS distro to use. Available options are bouncy and crystal (defaults to
  crystal), both of which are only compatible with core18 as the base.
• colcon-cmake-args (list of strings)
  Arguments to pass to cmake projects. Note that any arguments here which match
  colcon arguments need to be prefixed with a space. This can be done by quoting
  each argument with a leading space.
• colcon-catkin-cmake-args (list of strings)
  Arguments to pass to catkin packages. Note that any arguments here which match
  colcon arguments need to be prefixed with a space. This can be done by quoting
  each argument with a leading space.
• colcon-ament-cmake-args (list of strings)
  Arguments to pass to ament_cmake packages. Note that any arguments here which
  match colcon arguments need to be prefixed with a space. This can be done by
  quoting each argument with a leading space.

Related Information

See the catkin plugin for building ROS 1 parts.

For a simple example, see ROS 2 applications, or search GitHub for projects already using the plugin.