docker-ros – Automated Containerization of ROS Apps

docker-ros automatically builds minimal container images of ROS applications.

Important

This repository is open-sourced and maintained by the Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika) at RWTH Aachen University.
DevOps, Containerization and Orchestration of Software-Defined Vehicles are some of many research topics within our Vehicle Intelligence & Automated Driving domain.
If you would like to learn more about how we can support your advanced driver assistance and automated driving efforts, feel free to reach out to us!
📧 [email protected]

• About
  • Prerequisites
• Usage
  • Build a minimal image for deployment
  • Build development and deployment images
  • Build multi-arch images
  • Build deployment image with additional industrial_ci check
  • Build multi-arch images on arch-specific self-hosted runners in parallel
  • Build images locally
• Advanced Dependencies
  • Recursion
  • Package Blacklist
  • Extra System Dependencies (apt)
  • Extra System Dependencies (pip)
  • Custom Installation Script
  • Extra Image Files
• Additional Information
  • User Setup
  • Slim Deployment Image
• Configuration Variables

We recommend to use docker-ros in combination with our other tools for Docker and ROS.

• docker-ros-ml-images provides machine learning-enabled ROS Docker images
• docker-run is a CLI tool for simplified interaction with Docker images

About

docker-ros provides a generic Dockerfile that can be used to build development and deployment Docker images for arbitrary ROS packages or package stacks. Building such images can easily be automated by integrating docker-ros into CI through the provided GitHub action or GitLab CI template. The development image built by docker-ros contains all required dependencies and the source code of your ROS-based repository. The deployment image only contains dependencies and the compiled binaries created by building the ROS packages in the repository. docker-ros is also able to build multi-arch Docker images for amd64 and arm64 architectures. In addition, slim is integrated for slimming Docker image size of the deployment image by up to 30x (see Slim Deployment Image).

The Dockerfile performs the following steps to build these images:

1. All dependency repositories that are defined in a .repos file anywhere in the repository are cloned using vcstool.
2. (optional) Packages blacklisted in a special file blacklisted-packages.txt are removed from the workspace (see Advanced Dependencies).
3. The ROS dependencies listed in each package's package.xml are installed by rosdep.
4. (optional) Additional apt dependencies from a special file additional-debs.txt are installed, if needed (see Advanced Dependencies).
5. (optional) Additional pip requirements from a special file additional-pip-requirements.txt are installed, if needed (see Advanced Dependencies).
6. (optional) A special folder additional-files/ is copied into the images, if needed (see Advanced Dependencies).
7. (optional) A special script custom.sh is executed to perform further arbitrary installation commands, if needed (see Advanced Dependencies).
8. (deployment) All ROS packages are built using catkin (ROS) or colcon (ROS2).
9. (deployment) A custom launch command is configured to run on container start.

Prerequisites

docker-ros is made for automated execution in GitHub or GitLab CI pipelines. For local execution, see Build images locally.

GitHub

GitHub offers free minutes on GitHub-hosted runners executing GitHub Actions, see here. No further setup is required other than integrating docker-ros into your repository, see Usage.

Note that GitHub is currently only offering Linux runners based on the amd64 architecture. docker-ros can also build multi-arch Docker images solely on the amd64 platform through emulation, but performance can be improved greatly by deploying self-hosted runners for the arm64 platform.

GitLab

[!NOTE]

• GitLab runners must be based on the Docker executor, see here
• GitLab runners must run in privileged mode for Docker-in-Docker, see here
• GitLab runners must be tagged with tags privileged and either amd64 or arm64 depending on their architecture

GitLab offers free minutes on GitLab-hosted runners executing GitLab CI pipelines on gitlab.com, see here. On self-hosted GitLab instances, you can set up self-hosted runners, see here.

Note that GitLab is currently only offering Linux runners based on the amd64 architecture. docker-ros can also build multi-arch Docker images solely on the amd64 platform through emulation, but performance can be improved greatly by deploying self-hosted runners for the arm64 platform.

Usage

docker-ros can easily be integrated into any GitHub or GitLab repository containing ROS packages. Example integrations can be found in the following sections. Configuration options can be found here. For local execution, see Build images locally.

GitHub

docker-ros provides a GitHub action that can simply be added to a job via the jobs.<job_id>.steps[*].uses keyword. A quick start for GitHub Actions is found here.

GitLab

docker-ros provides a GitLab CI template that can simply be included in a .gitlab-ci.yml file. A quick start for GitLab CI is found here.

Build a minimal image for deployment

GitHub

on: push
jobs:
  docker-ros:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: ika-rwth-aachen/[email protected]
        with:
          base-image: rwthika/ros2:humble
          command: ros2 run my_pkg my_node

GitLab

include:
  - remote: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ika-rwth-aachen/docker-ros/v1.6.2/.gitlab-ci/docker-ros.yml

variables:
  BASE_IMAGE: rwthika/ros2:humble
  COMMAND: ros2 run my_pkg my_node

Build development and deployment images

GitHub

on: push
jobs:
  docker-ros:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: ika-rwth-aachen/[email protected]
        with:
          base-image: rwthika/ros2:humble
          command: ros2 run my_pkg my_node
          target: dev,run

GitLab

include:
  - remote: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ika-rwth-aachen/docker-ros/v1.6.2/.gitlab-ci/docker-ros.yml

variables:
  BASE_IMAGE: rwthika/ros2:humble
  COMMAND: ros2 run my_pkg my_node
  TARGET: dev,run

Build multi-arch images

GitHub

on: push
jobs:
  docker-ros:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: ika-rwth-aachen/[email protected]
        with:
          base-image: rwthika/ros2:humble
          command: ros2 run my_pkg my_node
          target: dev,run
          platform: amd64,arm64

GitLab

include:
  - remote: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ika-rwth-aachen/docker-ros/v1.6.2/.gitlab-ci/docker-ros.yml

variables:
  BASE_IMAGE: rwthika/ros2:humble
  COMMAND: ros2 run my_pkg my_node
  TARGET: dev,run
  PLATFORM: amd64,arm64

Build deployment image with additional industrial_ci check

GitHub

on: push
jobs:
  docker-ros:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: ika-rwth-aachen/[email protected]
        with:
          base-image: rwthika/ros2:humble
          command: ros2 run my_pkg my_node
          enable-industrial-ci: 'true'

GitLab

include:
  - remote: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ika-rwth-aachen/docker-ros/v1.6.2/.gitlab-ci/docker-ros.yml

variables:
  BASE_IMAGE: rwthika/ros2:humble
  COMMAND: ros2 run my_pkg my_node
  ENABLE_INDUSTRIAL_CI: 'true'

Build multi-arch images on arch-specific self-hosted runners in parallel

GitHub

on: push
jobs:
  docker-ros:
    strategy:
      matrix:
        target: [dev, run]
        platform: [amd64, arm64]
    runs-on: [self-hosted, "${{ matrix.platform }}"]
    steps:
      - uses: ika-rwth-aachen/[email protected]
        with:
          base-image: rwthika/ros2:humble
          command: ros2 run my_pkg my_node
          target: ${{ matrix.target }}
          platform: ${{ matrix.platform }}
          enable-singlearch-push: true
      # TODO: manifest

GitLab

# TODO

Build images locally

docker-ros can build Docker images locally by executing the build.sh script.

1. Clone docker-ros as a Git submodule to docker/docker-ros in your repository.

   # ros-repository/
   mkdir -p docker
   git submodule add https://github.com/ika-rwth-aachen/docker-ros.git docker/docker-ros

2. Configure the build using the same environment variables as used for GitLab CI and run build.sh, e.g.:

   # ros-repository/
     BASE_IMAGE="rwthika/ros2:humble" \
     COMMAND="ros2 run my_pkg my_node" \
     IMAGE="my-image:latest" \
   ./docker/docker-ros/scripts/build.sh

   [!NOTE]
   You can alternatively store your environment variable configuration in a .env file:

   # .env
   BASE_IMAGE="rwthika/ros2:humble"
   COMMAND="ros2 run my_pkg my_node"
   IMAGE="my-image:latest"

Advanced Dependencies

In order to keep things organized, we recommend to place all docker-ros related files in a docker folder on top repository level.

Recursion

Most of the steps listed in About and below can be toggled between recursive and non-recursive mode, see Configuration Variables. This usually means that not only special files on the top-level are considered (e.g., docker/additional-requirements.txt), but also files with the same name (e.g., additional-requirements.txt) that are found anywhere in the workspace, even after cloning the upstream repositories in step 1.

Package Blacklist

If your ROS-based repository (or any of your repository's upstream dependencies, see .repos) contains ROS packages that should neither be built nor be used for determining dependencies, you can blacklist those in a special blacklisted-packages.txt file.

Create a file blacklisted-packages.txt in your docker folder (or configure a different BLACKLISTED_PACKAGES_FILE) and list any ROS package name to blacklist.

Extra System Dependencies (apt)

If your ROS-based repository requires system dependencies that cannot be installed by specifying their rosdep keys in a package.xml, you can use a special additional-debs.txt file.

Create a file additional-debs.txt in your docker folder (or configure a different ADDITIONAL_DEBS_FILE) and list any other dependencies that need to be installed via apt.

Extra System Dependencies (pip)

If your ROS-based repository requires Python dependencies that cannot be installed by specifying their rosdep keys in a package.xml, you can use a special additional-pip-requirements.txt file.

Create a file additional-pip-requirements.txt in your docker folder (or configure a different ADDITIONAL_PIP_FILE) and list any other Python dependencies that need to be installed via pip.

Custom Installation Script

If your ROS-based repository requires to execute any other installation or pre-/post-installation steps, you can use a special custom.sh script.

Create a script custom.sh in your docker folder (or configure a different CUSTOM_SCRIPT_FILE) that executes arbitrary commands as part of the image building process.

Extra Image Files

If you need to have additional files present in the deployment image, you can use a special additional-files folder. The folder contents will be copied into the container before the custom installation script custom.sh is executed.

Create a folder additional-files in your docker folder (or configure a different ADDITIONAL_FILES_DIR) and place any files or directories in it. The contents will be copied to /docker-ros/additional-files in the image.

Additional Information

User Setup

Containers of the provided images start with root user by default. If the two environment variables DOCKER_UID and DOCKER_GID are passed, a new user with the corresponding UID/GID is created on the fly. Most importantly, this features allows to mount and edit files of the host user in the container without having to deal with permission issues.

docker run --rm -it -e DOCKER_UID=$(id -u) -e DOCKER_GID=$(id -g) -e DOCKER_USER=$(id -un) rwthika/ros:latest

The password of the custom user is set to its username (dockeruser:dockeruser by default).

Slim Deployment Image

docker-ros integrates the slim toolkit for minifying container images. slim is enabled by default and will, in addition to the run deployment image, produce an additional :latest-slim-tagged minified image. Note that the slimmed deployment image is stripped of every single thing not needed for executing the default launch command. The slimming process can be controlled via the SLIM_BUILD_ARGS configuration variable.

Configuration Variables

Note

GitHub Action input | GitLab CI environment variable

• additional-debs-file | ADDITIONAL_DEBS_FILE
  Relative filepath to file containing additional apt deb packages to install
  default: docker/additional-debs.txt
• additional-files-dir | ADDITIONAL_FILES_DIR
  Relative path to directory containing additional files to copy into image
  default: docker/additional-files
• additional-pip-file | ADDITIONAL_PIP_FILE
  Relative filepath to file containing additional pip packages to install
  default: docker/additional-pip-requirements.txt
• base-image | BASE_IMAGE
  Base image name:tag
  required
• blacklisted-packages-file | BLACKLISTED_PACKAGES_FILE
  Relative filepath to file containing blacklisted packages
  default: docker/blacklisted-packages.txt
• build-context | BUILD_CONTEXT
  Build context of Docker build process
  default: ${{ github.workspace }} | .
• command | COMMAND
  Launch command of run image
  required if target=run
• custom-script-file | CUSTOM_SCRIPT_FILE
  Relative filepath to script containing custom installation commands
  default: docker/custom.sh
• dev-image-name | DEV_IMAGE_NAME
  Image name of dev image
  default: <IMAGE_NAME>
• dev-image-tag | DEV_IMAGE_TAG
  Image tag of dev image
  default: <IMAGE_TAG>-dev
• disable-ros-installation | DISABLE_ROS_INSTALLATION
  Disable automatic installation of ros-$ROS_DISTRO-ros-core package
  e.g., if ROS is already installed in base-image and package is not available for the OS
  default: false
• - | DOCKER_ROS_GIT_REF
  Git ref of docker-ros to run in CI
  default: main
• enable-checkout | -
  Enable checkout action to (re-)download your repository prior to running the pipeline
  default: true
• enable-checkout-submodules | -
  Enable submodules for the checkout action (false|true|recursive)
  default: recursive
• enable-checkout-lfs | -
  Enable Git LFS support for the checkout action
  default: true
• enable-industrial-ci | ENABLE_INDUSTRIAL_CI
  Enable industrial_ci
  default: false
• enable-push-as-latest | ENABLE_PUSH_AS_LATEST
  Push images with tag latest/latest-dev in addition to the configured image names
  default: false
• enable-singlearch-push | ENABLE_SINGLEARCH_PUSH
  Enable push of single arch images with -amd64/-arm64 postfix
  default: false
• enable-recursive-additional-debs | ENABLE_RECURSIVE_ADDITIONAL_DEBS
  Enable recursive discovery of files named additional-debs-file
  default: false
• enable-recursive-additional-pip | ENABLE_RECURSIVE_ADDITIONAL_PIP
  Enable recursive discovery of files named additional-pip-file
  default: false
• enable-recursive-blacklisted-packages | ENABLE_RECURSIVE_BLACKLISTED_PACKAGES
  Enable recursive discovery of files named blacklisted-packages-file
  default: false
• enable-recursive-custom-script | ENABLE_RECURSIVE_CUSTOM_SCRIPT
  Enable recursive discovery of files named custom-script-file
  default: false
• enable-recursive-vcs-import | ENABLE_RECURSIVE_VCS_IMPORT
  Enable recursive discovery of files named *.repos
  default: true
• enable-slim | ENABLE_SLIM
  Enable an extra slimmed run image via slim (only if run stage is targeted)
  default: true
• git-https-password | GIT_HTTPS_PASSWORD
  Password for cloning private Git repositories via HTTPS
  default: ${{ github.token }} | $CI_JOB_TOKEN
• git-https-server | GIT_HTTPS_SERVER
  Server URL (without protocol) for cloning private Git repositories via HTTPS
  default: github.com | $CI_SERVER_HOST:$CI_SERVER_PORT
• git-https-user | GIT_HTTPS_USER
  Username for cloning private Git repositories via HTTPS
  default: ${{ github.actor }} | gitlab-ci-token
• git-ssh-known-host-keys | GIT_SSH_KNOWN_HOST_KEYS
  Known SSH host keys for cloning private Git repositories via SSH (may be obtained using ssh-keyscan)
• git-ssh-private-key | GIT_SSH_PRIVATE_KEY
  SSH private key for cloning private Git repositories via SSH
• image-name | IMAGE_NAME
  Image name of run image
  default: ghcr.io/${{ github.repository }} | $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE
• image-tag | IMAGE_TAG
  Image tag of run image default: latest
• platform | PLATFORM
  Target platform architecture (comma-separated list)
  default: runner architecture | amd64 supported values: amd64, arm64
• registry | REGISTRY
  Docker registry to push images to
  default: ghcr.io | $CI_REGISTRY
• registry-password | REGISTRY_PASSWORD
  Docker registry password
  default: ${{ github.token }} | $CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD
• registry-user | REGISTRY_USER
  Docker registry username
  default: ${{ github.actor }} | $CI_REGISTRY_USER
• rmw-implementation | RMW_IMPLEMENTATION
  ROS 2 middleware implementation
  default: rmw_cyclonedds_cpp
  supported values: rmw_zenoh_cpp, rmw_fastrtps_cpp, rmw_cyclonedds_cpp, rmw_gurumdds_cpp, ...
• rmw-zenoh-git-ref | RMW_ZENOH_GIT_REF
  Git ref of rmw_zenoh repo to build if RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_zenoh_cpp
  default: a7187eb42fd6a6a6bdfacf4308add39e5d8a27c7
• ros-distro | ROS_DISTRO
  ROS Distro
  required if ROS is not installed in base-image
  supported values: rolling, ..., noetic, ...
• slim-build-args | SLIM_BUILD_ARGS
  Arguments to slim build (except for --target and --tag)
  default: --sensor-ipc-mode proxy --continue-after=10 --show-clogs --http-probe=false
• slim-image-name | SLIM_IMAGE_NAME
  Image name of slim run image
  default: <IMAGE_NAME>
• slim-image-tag | SLIM_IMAGE_TAG
  Image tag of slim run image
  default: <IMAGE_TAG>-slim
• target | TARGET
  Target stage of Dockerfile (comma-separated list)
  default: run supported values: dev, run
• vcs-import-file | VCS_IMPORT_FILE
  Relative filepath to file containing additional repos to install via vcstools (only relevant if enable-recursive-vcs-import=false)
  default: .repos