Running ROS 2 nodes in Docker [community-contributed] - how-to

Docker containers provide a repeatable environment for trying ROS command line tools and demo nodes. This article explains how to run the talker and listener demo nodes in one container or in separate containers. After you follow it, you can test basic ROS communication using Docker or Docker Compose.

Area: builds, tools | Content type: how-to | Level: intermediate

Run two nodes in a single docker container

Pull the ROS docker image with tag “rolling-desktop”.

$ docker pull osrf/ros:rolling-desktop

Run the image in a container in interactive mode.

$ docker run -it osrf/ros:rolling-desktop

Your best friend is the ros2 command line help now.

$ ros2 --help

E.g. list all installed packages.

$ ros2 pkg list
(you will see a list of packages)

E.g. list all executables:

$ ros2 pkg executables
(you will see a list of <package> <executable>)

Run a minimal example of 2 C++ nodes (1 topic subscriber listener, 1 topic publisher talker) from the package demo_nodes_cpp in this container:

$ ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp listener &
$ ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

Run two nodes in two separate docker containers

Open a terminal. Run the image in a container in interactive mode and launch a topic publisher (executable talker from the package demo_nodes_cpp) with ros2 run:

$ docker run -it --rm osrf/ros:rolling-desktop ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

Open a second terminal. Run the image in a container in interactive mode and launch a topic subscriber (executable listener from the package demo_nodes_cpp) with ros2 run:

$ docker run -it --rm osrf/ros:rolling-desktop ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp listener

As an alternative to the command line invocation, you can create a docker-compose.yml file (here version 2) with the following (minimal) content:

version: '2'

services:
  talker:
    image: osrf/ros:rolling-desktop
    command: ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker
  listener:
    image: osrf/ros:rolling-desktop
    command: ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp listener
    depends_on:
      - talker

To run the containers call docker compose up in the same directory. You can close the containers with Ctrl+C.