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Getting Started with WSL-ROS2 on the University Managed Desktops

Prerequisites

Launching WSL-ROS2

  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:

    Make sure you select WSL-ROS2!

    You'll then be presented with the following screen:

    WSL-ROS2 is now being installed, which may take a couple of minutes to complete. Once it's done, the Windows Terminal should automatically launch:

This is a WSL-ROS2 Terminal Instance!

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 Home Directory (more detail here) and save it to your University U: Drive. Whenever you launch a fresh WSL-ROS2 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:

It looks like you already have a backup from a previous session:
  U:\wsl-ros\ros2-backup-XXX.tar.gz
Do you want to restore this now? [y/n]

Enter Y+Enter to restore your data from this backup file, or N+Enter 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-ROS2 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+Enter to continue where you left things previously, or N+Enter 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!