brains2

"it's alive"

setup

First, install miniforge3, which on Linux and macOS should amout to

curl -L -O "https://github.com/conda-forge/miniforge/releases/latest/download/Miniforge3-$(uname)-$(uname -m).sh"
bash Miniforge3-$(uname)-$(uname -m).sh

You may need to restart your shell to have access to conda.

Now to setup the project you can:

# install conda-lock, which we will use to install the env from a lock file,
# thus improving reproducibility
conda install -n base conda-lock
# clone the project
git clone https://github.com/tudoroancea/brains2.git --recursive
cd brains2
# create the conda environment and activate it
chmod +x scripts/*.sh
conda activate base
./scripts/env_sync.sh
conda deactivate
conda activate brains2
# build ROS (2) workspace and source it
./scripts/build.sh
. install/setup.sh
# install acados' python interface
pip3 install -e $ACADOS_SOURCE_DIR/interfaces/acados_template

howto

Build the workspace

./scripts/build.sh

Run unit tests

./scripts/test.sh

Update the environment

./scripts/env_sync.sh

Add a new dependency

Prioritize as much as possible dependencies installable via conda to ensure simplicity and reproducibility. You can check if the desired package is available on anaconda.org and if it is, you can add it to the env.yml file.

When it is not, still try to prioritize reproducible solutions such as git submodules pinned at a specific commit (and not a branch), and simple to install solutions (that ideally do not require manual installation steps).

Note

Currently, the only non-conda dependency is acados, which was added as a git submodule in src and is built by colcon.

You can now lock the environment with:

conda-lock -f env.yml 

and update it with:

conda-lock install -n brains2 

You can also accomplish the same with the scripts scripts/env_lock.sh and scripts/env_sync.sh, or scripts/env_lock_sync.sh.

Note

Locking the environment will automatically update all the dependencies to the latest compatible versions, because conda-lock does not take into account the old lock file.