Up-to-date Docker Images for Gazebo + ROS Using the OSRF Repo

General
1

Thanks to the work of Shane Loretz, there is now a docker registry that contains regularly updated ROS Docker images: Docker images for ROS Updated More Frequently - General - ROS Discourse .

I took the chance and added something we’ve been missing for quite some time - a Docker images providing ROS + Gazebo that uses the packages.osrfoundation.org repo for Gazebo packages.

If you don’t know, Gazebo packages get synced to packages.ros.org from time to time so they are also available in the official ros-noetic-simulators metapackage and Docker images. However, this Gazebo is usually a few minor versions old, which may come with unexpected or buggy behavior.

By adding the packages.osrfoundation.org PPA to the Docker image, you get the latest Gazebo release in the image. And that’s exactly what is now available via the ros:noetic-simulators-osrf Docker image.

So you can now change your Docker files from

FROM osrf/ros:noetic-desktop-full

to

FROM ghcr.io/sloretz/ros:noetic-simulators-osrf

The images are built both for amd64 and for arm64 platforms.

If anyone is able to follow the path towards ROS 2 or new Gazebo, it would be great!

2 Likes
2

Hello Martin!

This is great! Just for reference, as I was not able to see a link to your work, the PR is this one Added ros1/simulators-osrf image by peci1 · Pull Request #7 · sloretz/ros_oci_images · GitHub (if I’m not wrong).

This is totally under my radar, I’m particularly waiting for the GSoC program since in the Infra Team we have a proposal named “Gazebo Effortless Installations” that should fit perfectly into tasks like this one.

Thanks for sharing Martin!

3

Great! So I can hope that before the time we migrate to ROS 2, there will already be easy-to-use Docker images :smiley: