Examples

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Overview

Gazebo GUI comes with several examples of plugins and other files under the examples folder.

Standalone applications

Gazebo GUI can be used as a C++ library by other applications.

Examples provided under examples/standalone can be compiled and run without the gz gui command line tool.

For example, build an example in which an empty window can be opened programmatically as follows:

cd examples/standalone/window
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Then run it:

./window

Custom plugins

Gazebo GUI comes with several plugins, but its true power is loading custom plugins developed by others. Under examples/plugins, there are several examples on how to build different types of plugins.

For example, we can build the hello_plugin example plugin:

cd examples/plugin/hello_plugin
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

Then create the plugins directory and copy the generated library to it so that Gazebo GUI can find the plugin:

mkdir -p ~/.gz/gui/plugins
# Linux
cp libHelloPlugin.so ~/.gz/gui/plugins/
# MacOS
cp libHelloPlugin.dylib ~/.gz/gui/plugins/

Now you can use the command line to open it:

gz gui -s HelloPlugin

All example plugins

• hello_plugin: A button that prints hello on click.
• custom_context_menu: Overrides the default context menu.

Configuration files

Configuration files are used to load a Gazebo GUI window with several plugins and custom window configurations.

Example configuration files are provided in the /examples/config folder.

Unlike example plugins and standalone programs, these files don't require any extra installation step and can be run directly from the command line.

For example, you can run the example pubsub.config from the command line:

gz gui -c examples/config/pubsub.config