Blueprint has reached end-of-life on December 2020. This page exists for archival purposes. Please refer to the latest supported version.
Blueprint Installation#
Blueprint supports the following platforms:
Ubuntu Bionic on amd64/i386
MacOS Mojave
Gazebo currently only works in headless mode
Windows support is still experimental although most of the packages should work
as expected. There are no binaries for Windows at this moment. The ign-gazebo
package is still not available for Windows, the installation should be done from
source code.
Blueprint Libraries#
The Blueprint collection is composed by many different Ignition libraries. The collection assures that all libraries all compatible and can be used together.
Library name |
Version |
|---|---|
ign-cmake |
2.x |
ign-common |
3.x |
ign-fuel-tools |
3.x |
ign-gazebo |
2.x |
ign-gui |
2.x |
ign-launch |
1.x |
ign-math |
6.x |
ign-msgs |
4.x |
ign-physics |
1.x |
ign-plugin |
1.x |
ign-rendering |
2.x |
ign-sensors |
2.x |
ign-tools |
0.x |
ign-transport |
7.x |
sdformat |
8.x |
Option 1: Installation on Ubuntu Bionic#
All of the Blueprint binaries are hosted in the osrfoundation repository. To install
all of them, the metapackage ignition-blueprint can be installed:
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'
wget http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ignition-blueprint
All libraries should be ready to use and the ign gazebo app ready to be executed.
Option 2: Install on MacOS Mojave (10.14)#
All the Blueprint binaries are available in Mojave using the homebrew package manager. The homebrew tool can easily be installed using:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"
After installing the homebrew package manager, Ignition Blueprint can be installed running:
brew tap osrf/simulation
brew install ignition-blueprint
All libraries should be ready to use and the ign gazebo app ready to be executed.
Option 3: Source Installation (any platform)#
The use of some additional tools is recommended to help with the source compilation, although other ways of correctly getting and building the sources are also possible.
Colcon supports python 3.5 (or higher) which is not the default option in some platforms (like Ubuntu Bionic). The python virtualenv could be a useful solution in cases where the default option can not be easily changed.
Installing vcstool and colcon#
For getting the sources of all libraries the easiest way is to use vcstool. The tool is available from pip in all platforms:
pip install vcstool
Since Ignition libraries use git for version control it must be available in the system for vcstool to work properly. In Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install git
To compile all the different libraries and ign-gazebo in the right order it is recommended to use colcon. The colcon tool is available in all platforms using pip (or pip3, if pip fails):
pip install -U colcon-common-extensions
Use .deb packages in Ubuntu to install vcstool and colcon#
An alternative method is to use the .deb packages available on Debian or Ubuntu:
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'
sudo apt-get install curl # if curl isn't already installed
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.asc | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3-vcstool python3-colcon-common-extensions git
Getting the sources#
The instructions below use some UNIX commands to manage directories but the obvious alternatives on Windows should provide the same result.
The first step would be to create a developer workspace in which vcstool and
colcon can work.
mkdir -p ~/workspace/src
cd ~/workspace/src
All the sources of ignition-blueprint are declared in a yaml file. Download it to the workspace.
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ignition-tooling/gazebodistro/master/collection-blueprint.yaml
Use vcstool to automatically retrieve all the Ignition libraries sources from
their repositories:
vcs import < collection-blueprint.yaml
The src subdirectory should contain all the sources ready to be built.
Install dependencies#
Before compiling it is necessary to install all the dependencies of the diferent packages that compose the Blueprint collection. Every platform has a different method to install software dependencies.
Add packages.osrfoundation.org to the apt sources list:
sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/ubuntu-stable `lsb_release -cs` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-stable.list'
wget http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo.key -O - | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
As reference the command below will install all dependencies in Ubuntu Bionic:
sudo apt-get install cmake freeglut3-dev libavcodec-dev libavdevice-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libdart6-collision-ode-dev libdart6-dev libdart6-utils-urdf-dev libfreeimage-dev libgflags-dev libglew-dev libgts-dev libogre-1.9-dev libogre-2.1-dev libprotobuf-dev libprotobuf-dev libprotoc-dev libqt5core5a libswscale-dev libtinyxml2-dev libtinyxml-dev pkg-config protobuf-compiler python qml-module-qt-labs-folderlistmodel qml-module-qt-labs-settings qml-module-qtquick2 qml-module-qtquick-controls qml-module-qtquick-controls2 qml-module-qtquick-dialogs qml-module-qtquick-layouts qml-module-qtqml-models2 qtbase5-dev qtdeclarative5-dev qtquickcontrols2-5-dev ruby ruby-ronn uuid-dev libzip-dev libjsoncpp-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libyaml-dev libzmq3-dev libsqlite3-dev libwebsockets-dev swig ruby-dev -y
Building the Ignition Libraries#
The Ignition Libraries require the following compilers on each platform:
Ubuntu Bionic: gcc 8
MacOS Mojave: Xcode 10
Windows: Visual Studio 2017
Installing gcc version 8 on Ubuntu Bionic#
To install gcc version 8 on Ubuntu Bionic:
sudo apt-get install g++-8
Set gcc-8 and g++-8 to be the default compilers.
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-8 800 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-8 --slave /usr/bin/gcov gcov /usr/bin/gcov-8
At this point gcc and g++ should both report version 8. Test this with
the following commands.
gcc -v
g++ -v
Building the colcon workspace#
Once the compiler and all the sources are in place it is time to compile them.
Start the procedure by changing into the workspace and listing the packages
recognized by colcon:
cd ~/workspace/
colcon list -g
colcon should list the Ignition libraries with their
interdependencies. If that is the case, then you are ready
to build the whole set of libraries:
colcon build --merge-install
If there are no errors, all the binaries should be ready to use.
Using the workspace#
The workspace binaries are ready but every time that ign gazebo needs to be
executed or third party code is going to be developed using the Ignition
libraries, one command is needed:
. ~/workspace/install/local_setup.bash
(or call ~/workspace/install/local_setup.bat on Windows)
After running the command all paths for running apps or developing code will be set in the current shell.
Troubleshooting#
Unable to create the rendering window#
If you’re getting errors like “Unable to create the rendering window”, it could mean you’re using an old OpenGL version. Gazebo Sim uses the Ogre 2 rendering engine by default, which requires an OpenGL version higher than 3.3.
This can be confirmed by checking the Ogre 2 logs at ~/.ignition/rendering/ogre2.log,
which should have an error like:
“OGRE EXCEPTION(3:RenderingAPIException): OpenGL 3.3 is not supported. Please update your graphics card drivers.”
You can also check your OpenGL version running:
glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"
You should be able to use Ogre 1 without any issues however. You can check if that’s working by running a world which uses Ogre 1 instead of Ogre 2, such as:
ign gazebo -v 3 lights.sdf
If that loads, you can continue to use Ignition with Ogre 1, just be sure to
specify ogre in your SDF files instead of ogre2.
To enable Ogre 2 support, you’ll need to update your computer’s OpenGL version. As suggested on the Ogre logs, this may require updating your graphics card drivers.
The Ogre 2 debs from the osrfoundation repository are built from a fork of
Ogre’s v2-1 branch with changes needed for deb packaging and allowing it to
be co-installable with Ogre 1.x. The code can be found here: