Developing with Gazebo CMake

Developing with Gazebo CMake

This tutorial documents various tips and strategies for developing with Gazebo CMake.

Helpful CMake flags

There are several flags that control the results of the CMake tool. Some of these flags are built into CMake, where some are Gazebo CMake specific.

All of the following flags may be set as part of an individual CMake invocation. Alternatively, the flags may be passed to colcon using techniques described later in this document.

Setting the build type

The CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE variable controls the type of binary output from the build stage. This will have an impact on the flags passed to the compiler and linker.

The available options are:

• RelWithDebInfo: Mostly optimized build, but with debug symbols.
• Debug: Debug build without optimizations, with debug symbols enabled.
• Release: Fully optimized build, no debug symbols.
• MinSizeRel: Fully optimized build, minimal binary size
• Coverage: Build with additional information required for the gcov analysis tool
• Profile: Use flags that are helpful with the gprof profiling tool

More information about flags applied can be found in GzSetCompilerFlags.cmake

If left unspecified, CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE is set to RelWithDebInfo

To change the build type, set the CMake flag:

-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

Disabling or suppressing warnings about optional components

Many Gazebo packages come with optional component libraries. These optional components will typically have additional dependencies that the package's core library does not require. If you are missing the dependencies of any optional components, you will receive a cmake warning like

-- Skipping component [component_name]: Missing dependency [dependency_name].
   ^~~~~ Set SKIP_component_name=true in cmake to suppress this warning.

If you do not care about the specified component, you can safely ignore this warning. The configuration and build steps will succeed without any problem. The only side effect is the optional component will not be built.

If you do want to build the optional component, then you will need to install whichever dependencies were said to be missing and then rerun cmake.

If you do not want to build the optional component and you want to suppress the warning about the missing dependencies, you can set the cmake flag:

-DSKIP_component_name=true

where you should replace component_name with the actual name of the component as specified inside the angle brackets [] of the warning.

Creating a compilation database

CMake can optionally generate a compilation data base that may be used with a variety of code completion tools.

By default, a compilation database is not generated

To enable compilation database generation, set the CMake flag:

-DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=ON

For more information about what the compilation database is, consult the clang documentation

Some examples of utilities that can use the compilation database:

• coc.vim: Code completion for VIM
• YouCompleteMe Code completion for VIM

Using the ninja build system

Rather than using make, it may be desired to use the Ninja build tool.

By default make will be used.

To change the build system type, set the CMake flag:

-GNinja

Build sanitizers

GZ_SANITIZER CMake parameter can be used with different compilers to support the detection of different problems in the code. Check the documentation for `GZ_SANITIZER` flag

Using CCache

When you are doing frequent rebuilds, you can use a program to cache intermediate compiler results.

First, install ccache and configure it to an appropriate cache size for your system:

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt install ccache
$ ccache -M10G
Set cache size limit to 10.0 GB

Then set the CMake flags:

-DCMAKE_C_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=ccache
-DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_LAUNCHER=ccache

Enabling/Disabling Documentation

When you are doing frequent rebuilds, it generally doesn't make sense to rebuild documentation each build.

By default, building documentation is enabled.

To disable building documentation, set the CMake flag:

-DBUILD_DOCS=OFF

Enabling/Disabling Tests

If your intent is to only produce libraries and executables, it is possible to disables tests.

By default, building tests is enabled.

To disable building tests, set the CMake flag:

-DBUILD_TESTING=OFF

Enabling/Disabling Buildsystem Tests

There are additional tests of the Gazebo CMake buildsystem. It is recommend to run these tests when making modifications to the Gazebo CMake codebase.

By default, building buildsystem tests is disabled.

To enable building buildsystem tests, set the CMake flags:

-DBUILD_TESTING=ON
-DBUILDSYSTEM_TESTING=ON

Developing with Colcon and vcstool

colcon is a tool that improves the workflow of building and testing multiple software packages. As a Gazebo collection is composed of multiple packages that are frequently built and tested together, colcon eases this workflow.

The basic outline of obtaining Gazebo source packages via vcs and building with colcon is available in the Gazebo source installation documentation.

Passing CMake flags via command line

When performing colcon builds, flags may be passed to Gazebo CMake to configure the build.

This can be done via the --cmake-args flag in colcon:

colcon build --cmake-args -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=1

Passing colcon mixins via command line

To ease configuration of common flags, colcon has a concept of mixins, that are flags that "shortcut" groups of behavior.

The set of readily-available defaults is in the colcon-mixin-repository.

To install:

$ colcon mixin add default https://raw.githubusercontent.com/colcon/colcon-mixin-repository/master/index.yaml
$ colcon mixin update default
$ colcon mixin show

An example of building with colcon with two mixins:

• ccache mixin
• rel-with-db-info mixin

colcon build --mixin ccache rel-with-deb-info

This will build with the flags applied from the requested mixins.

Colcon allows you to create your own mixins for commonly-reused command line flags. For more information about creating mixins, consult the colcon mixin documentation

Using a defaults file

It is useful to be able to apply a consistent set of flags across an entire Gazebo collection when building. One mechanism for accomplishing this is a defaults.yaml file. This is a file of configuration options that colcon will read to customize the default behavior. More information about the defaults.yaml file can be found in the corresponding colcon documentation

For the following, if you do not have colcon or vcs installed, consult the Gazebo source installation documentation.

To try this out, first create a Gazebo source workspace:

mkdir -p ~/gz_edifice/src
cd ~/gz_edifice/
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gazebo-tooling/gazebodistro/main/collection-edifice.yaml
vcs import src < collection-edifice.yaml

Then add a ~/gz_edifice/defaults.yaml file with compilation flags:

{
  "build": {
    "merge-install": true,
    "symlink-install": true,
    "cmake-args": [
      "--no-warn-unused-cli",
      "-DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=1",
      "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo",
    ]
  }
}

To build with this defaults file, first export the correct environment variable and execute colcon:

cd ~/gz_edifice
export COLCON_DEFAULTS_FILE=`pwd`/defaults.yaml
colcon build

Using a defaults file with mixins

Mixins can also be applied via the defaults.yaml file:

{
  "build": {
    "merge-install": true,
    "symlink-install": true,
    "mixins": [
      "compile-commands",
      "rel-with-deb-info",
    ]
  }
}

Setting a per-workspace defaults file with direnv

Optionally, defaults can be applied user-wide by placing a defaults file at $COLCON_HOME/defaults.yaml (which is ~/.colcon/defaults.yaml by default).

In order to manage per-workspace settings, a tool like direnv can be used to automate the application of the environment variable. Once direnv is installed and configured with your shell of choice, do the following:

$ cd ~/gz_edifice/
# The environment variable will be unset
$ echo $COLCON_DEFAULTS_FILE
 
$ echo export COLCON_DEFAULTS_FILE=`pwd`/defaults.yaml > .envrc
direnv: error .envrc is blocked, Run `direnv allow` to approve its content
$ direnv allow
direnv: loading ~/gz_edifice/.envrc
direnv: export +COLCON_DEFAULTS_FILE
 
$ echo $COLCON_DEFAULTS_FILE
~/gz_edifice/defaults.yaml

Once this is configured, the environment will be applied each time you navigate to the ~/gz_edifice directory or its children.