ROS on MSIX Packaging

MSIX is a Windows app package format that provides a modern packaging experience to all Windows apps.

This project contains some useful scripts to build MSIX packages for ROS applications.

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio 2019 with C++ support
• Windows 10 SDK
• Create a certificate for package signing
• Clone this project to a local location
• ROS Workspace ready for packaging

You can install Windows 10 SDK by selecting Windows 10 SDK (10.0.19041.0) in the optional components of the Visual Studio 2019 Installer.

Before you proceed, it is highly recommended to read What's MSIX and learn it benefits.

Task 1: Binary Install ROS on Windows

You can binary install ROS on Windows by following ROS on Windows installation. You can skip this step if you did it already.

Task 2: Install ROS Workspace

Now you will need to install your ROS workspace into c:\opt\install and make it live side-by-side with the ROS installation.

You can do it by specifying the install space when running catkin_make_isolated:

:: catkin_make_isolated example

catkin_make_isolated --install --merge --install-space c:\opt\install

Task 3: Prepare ROS Runtime Contents

Check the folder layout of c:\opt and it should be like as below:

-- opt
   |-- python27amd64
   |-- ros\melodic\x64
   |-- rosdeps\x64
   |-- install

Now open the PowerShell terminal and change the working directory to this project. Run rosprep.ps1 to prepare the ROS runtime contents, and it will stage the results under working folder.

rosprep.ps1 copies the contents only required at runtime and fixes up hard-coded prefix in ROS files to accommodate MSIX virtualized file system requirement.

Task 4: Prepare MSIX Packaging Layout and App Manifest Files

Before building MSIX package, you will need to define some answer files for MSIX to build.

In this project, you can check this example and modify it per your requirement.

Under the example folder, you can find:

• PackagingLayout.xml: Define the file contents for MSIX packaging.
• AppxManifest.xml: Define the MSIX app's entry points and additional capability\behavior.
• Launcher.bat: Define the start-up ROS application by roslaunch convention.

ROS is using a communication model which requires to listen TCP\UDP ports. It is important to identify and define the proper firewall rules for the best experience. From the previous step, rosprep.ps1 generates a firewall.xml as a baseline for all the executables potentially required to do ROS topics publish and subscribe. It is recommended to review it and integrate the rules back to your AppxManifest.xml.

Task 5: Build MSIX Bundles and Packages

Run build.ps1 to package the example project. The -certFile test.pfx -certPassword 1234 can specify the signing certificate. The -packagingLayout <path to PackagingLayout.xml> can specify your customized PackagingLayout.xml.

Task 6: Install MSIX Packages

Now you can find the MSIX packages under output folder. Double click ros-melodic-desktop.msixbundle to install.

Or you can install MSIX to device context by Add-AppProvisionedPackage.

On your target machine, the signing certificate needs to be trusted before installing the package. Open PowerShell in administrative privilege, run Import-Certificate -FilePath "<your certificate file (.cer)>" -CertStoreLocation Cert:\LocalMachine\Root. Then the certificate will be added to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store.

Task 7: Run ROS Application

You can find the app entry point registered on the Start Menu. Click it to execute.

You will need to rename the c:\opt to something else (for example, c:\opt_) on your target device. Otherwise, the application could be affected by the ROS installation. This is due to ROS build tools currently embed hard-coded paths to PE files and this fix is work in progress now.

What's Next

Now you know how to package ROS into MSIX package. You can integrate it with CI\CD pipelines. And you may want to know more about how to distribute in larger scale.

Learn more about MSIX distribution here.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes you need to be able to trouble shoot an installation. Here is a collection of useful resources to help.

• MSIX Validation and Troubleshooting
• Hover: Launching apps inside a MSIX/App-V container

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.