Using ROS2 with Docker

How to use ROS2 via Docker

Question

I want to try out a distribution of ROS2, but it does not support my computer's operating system. But I also want to avoid installing a compatible version of Ubuntu or Windows on my computer just for running ROS2.

I heard that Docker might allow me to do this. How would I go about it?

Answer

You would run ROS2 on your existing OS as a Docker image in a Docker container. To do this, you first need to install Docker.

Installing Docker

On Linux Distributions

Docker's official manuals and guides push you to install Docker Desktop, regardless of your operating system. But Docker Desktop is just a GUI that adds layers of abstraction on top of Docker Engine, which is the technology that drives Docker. And we can communicate with Docker Engine directly after installing it via the Docker CLI.

So if you use a Linux distribution (like Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, etc.), just install the Docker Engine directly; we won't need the features Docker Desktop offers. Go to this page to install Docker Engine for Ubuntu.

Even if you don't use Ubuntu, just go to the page mentioned, and find your distribution on the Table of Contents you find at the left bar of the website. Don't expect to find help on the Docker Engine Overview page: they'll just start pushing you towards Docker Desktop again.

On MacOS

You'll have to install Docker Desktop. Go to this page and follow the instructions.

After Installation

After installing Docker Engine or Docker Desktop, open a terminal and execute:

sudo docker --version

You should see an output like:

Docker version 25.0.3, build 4debf41

if you installed Docker correctly.

Running ROS2 on Docker

It's possible to develop your ROS2 package entirely via the minimalistic Docker image the ROS2 community recommends. In fact, this seems to be a, if not the, common practice in the ROS2 community.

But the learning curve for this is probably, for most software engineers, very, very steep. From what I learned, you'll need an excellent grasp of Docker, networking, and the Linux kernel to pull it off successfully.

If you don't have an excellent grasp of these three technologies, it's probably better to use a more robust Docker image that has enough configured for you to go through ROS2's official tutorial. Afterwards, if you want to use ROS2 for actual development, I recommend installing the necessary OS on your computer and running ROS2 directly on it.

Such a repository has been provided by tiryoh on github. To use it, just run:

docker run -p 6080:80 --security-opt seccomp=unconfined --shm-size=512m tiryoh/ros2-desktop-vnc:iron

It will take a while for the command to run. After it does, keep the terminal window open, and visit the address http://127.0.0.1:6080/ on your browser, and click "Connect" on the VNC window. This should take you to an Ubuntu Desktop, where you can use the Terminator application to go through ROS2's official tutorial.

If afterwards you want to remove the docker image (since it's quite large) enter

docker ps -a

Locate the NAME of your image in the output, and execute:

docker rm NAME

E.g. docker rm practical_mclaren.

Tiryoh's repository of the image can be found here. But you don't need to clone it to use his image.