Installing ROS 2 Using Docker (Linux & Mac)

Applicable to: Linux and Mac Users

Acknowledgments

This solution has been put together by Atri Hegde, a COM2009 student from 2024 (and a course demonstrator in 2025!)

Thanks Atri!!

Setup

See here for the docker-ros2 repo and the instructions on how to install it:

https://github.com/hegde-atri/ros2-docker

Launching the ROS Environment

Mac & Linux

Instructions on how to launch the ROS2 docker container are provided in the README, so please consult this for all the details. Essentially though (if you're on a Mac or Linux machine) then you first need to fire up the docker container using:

ros_start

... and once that's done, you need to run the following command to enter the ROS2 environment:

ros_shell

The above assumes that you have already set up your shell appropriately (again see the README).