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Getting Started with WSL-ROS on the University Managed Desktops

Prerequisites

Launching WSL-ROS

  1. Click the Windows Start Menu button:

  2. Then, start typing wsl-ros and click on the application shortcut that should appear in the list:

    You will be presented with the following screen:

    WSL-ROS is now being installed from our custom OS image, which may take a couple of minutes to complete. Once it's done, the Windows Terminal should automatically launch:

This is an Ubuntu Terminal Instance running within the WSL-ROS Environment!

Configuring Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code (or "VS Code," for short) should be installed on all the University of Sheffield Managed Desktop Computers that have WSL-ROS pre-installed on. This is a great Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that we'll use extensively throughout the course. You'll first need to make sure it's set up correctly though, so follow the instructions here, in preparation for later.

Tip

You should only ever need to do this bit once: the configurations should be saved to your user profile, and should be carried over to any other University Desktop Computer that you log into!

Backing-Up (and Restoring) your Data

If you're working with WSL-ROS on a university managed desktop machine, the WSL-ROS Environment will only be preserved for a limited time on the machine that you installed it on. As such, any work that you do within WSL-ROS will not be preserved between sessions or across different machines automatically! It's therefore really important that you run a backup script before you close WSL-ROS down. To do so is very easy, simply run the command below from any WSL-ROS Terminal Instance:

wsl_ros backup

This will create an archive of your Linux Home Directory and save it to your University U: Drive. Whenever you launch a fresh WSL-ROS Environment again on another day, or on a different machine, simply run the following command to restore your work to it:

wsl_ros restore

To make things a little easier, on launching WSL-ROS the system will check to see if a backup file already exists from a previous session. If it does, then you will be asked if you want to restore it straight away:

Enter Y to restore your data from this backup file, or N to leave the backup file alone and work from fresh (none of your previous work will be restored).

Re-Launching the Environment

As discussed above, the WSL-ROS environment is not preserved on the university managed desktops indefinitely. If you log back in to the same machine within a few hours however, then it may still be there, and you'll be presented with the following message when you launch it:

Enter Y to continue where you left things previously, or N to start from a fresh installation.

Warning

If you select N then any work that you have created in the existing environment will be deleted! Always make sure you back up your work using the procedure outlined above!