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ROS for Windows Porting Cookbook

While every effort has been made to reduce the effort needed to support ROS nodes on Windows, there will inevitably be required changes between platforms. This cookbook is intended to collect common issues and recommended solutions.

Windows and Linux Differences

Directory Separators

Windows uses backslash \ whereas Linux uses forward slash /. As we encounter path processing, we've been replacing them with the Python or Boost equivalents.

User directory

Linux has a neat shortcut for refering to the users' home directory ~.

Windows uses the environment variable %USERPROFILE% - use this whenever you see ~ in ROS documentation.

Quote handling in command window

Cmd.exe is the command processor of command window. Single quotes are not used at all by the cmd.exe except in batch file to enclose the command to run within a FOR /F statement. Cmd.exe handles quoting with double quotes. This is different from Linux that uses single quote as quote character. As encounter quoting on Windows, please use double quote. The following example shows using double quotes around the message contents: 

rostopic pub -1 /turtle1/cmd_vel geometry_msgs/Twist -- "[2.0, 0.0, 0.0]" "[0.0, 0.0, 1.8]"

Paths and ROS commands

Many ROS Commands are sensitive to the drive letter they are executed from. This manifests in problems such as rosdeps not resolving correctly.

To address this either:

  • Put all of your ROS workspaces on the C:\ drive
  • Link folders from your C:\ drive to your workspaces.

To link a folder on Windows, use the mklink to create a filesystem link from one drive to another: 

mkdir d:\workspaces
mklink c:\workspaces d:\workspaces

C\C++ General

Symbol Visibility

Windows and Linux handle symbol visibility differently. You may encounter a build error of the form: 

error C2448: '__attribute__': function-style initializer appears to be a function definition
'visibility': identifier not found

See the Symbol Visibility Documentation for resolution steps and more information.

install Library TARGETS given no DESTINATION!

Windows will generate separate archives and libraries. To handle this, add an ARCHIVE destination: 

install(
    TARGETS ${PROJECT_NAME}
    ARCHIVE DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_LIB_DESTINATION}
    LIBRARY DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_LIB_DESTINATION})

All Warnings

Warnings are good. The options for selecting warning level are different. If you add specific compiler options for warnings, please add an MSVC selection. For the Visual Studio compiler, you'll use /W3 for warning level 3 (or /W4 which offers more warning options). If you would like to treat warnings as errors pass /WX. However, these warnings would need to be corrected before the compile will succeed.

if(MSVC)
  add_compile_options(/W3 /WX)
else()
  add_compile_options(-Wall -Wextra)
endif()

You can disable specific warnings using #pragma:

#ifdef _MSC_VER
  #pragma warning(disable: 4244)
  #pragma warning(disable: 4661)
#endif

Security Warnings

Windows deprecates certain C APIs because they are inherently insecure. You will receive a message of the form:

warning C4996: 'xxx': This function or variable may be unsafe. Consider using xxx_s instead. To disable deprecation, use _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS. See online help for details.

Consider using modern equivalents. If you cannot use a modern equivalents, you can add the following to your cmake files:

add_definitions("/D_CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS")
add_definitions("/D_SILENCE_ALL_CXX17_DEPRECATION_WARNINGS")

C++ Standard Version

Use CMake to set the C++ version:

if(NOT CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD)
  set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 14)
endif()

NOTE: Boost 1.66 in the Melodic requires CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 11

GNU Compiler Extension __attribute__

__attribute__ is not supported with Microsoft compilers. You can use a macro replacement or use a cross platform convention.

Error LNK2019: Unresolved External Symbol

Linux automatically exports symbols. Windows, symbols are private by default. CMake provides a facility for this.

In your cmake:

set(CMAKE_WINDOWS_EXPORT_ALL_SYMBOLS ON)

However, you may encounter a problem with static class members, i.e. global data symbols, as discussed here. In this case you need to manually handle visibility of the static class members, using the GenerateExportHeader CMake module.

In particular, if your static class members are contained in a library called mylibrary, you need to add the following lines in your CMake after the call to add_library(mylibrary ...):

include(GenerateExportHeader)
generate_export_header(mylibrary)
target_include_directories(mylibrary PRIVATE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR})

The generate_export_header(mylibrary) call creates a file called mylibrary_export.h, contained in the ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR} build directory. This file contains the definition of the mylibrary_EXPORT macro, that you can use to modify your code as in the following: 

#include "mylibrary_export.h"

class myclass
{
 static MYLIBRARY_EXPORT int GlobalCounter;

If this class definition is contained in a public header, you need to make sure to install the generated mylibrary_export.h together with the rest of the headers, i.e. : 

install(FILES ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/mylibrary_export.h
        DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_INCLUDE_DESTINATION})

Beware of ROS_ASSERT Usage

ROS_ASSERT is a macro only evaluating the condition when NDEBUG is not present. And NDEBUG is managed and defined by CMake for Windows build. As a result, none of the condition executes.

A canonical example can be found here. And a related discussion can be found here.

Error C2065 'M_PI': undeclared identifier

Add the following to the top of your file:

#define _USE_MATH_DEFINES

or define it in the CMakeLists.txt.

Error C2059: syntax error: 'constant' (windows.h included before conflicting dependency)

Cause:

Windows.h defines some macros which may conflict with variables defined in ROS packages. This causes build breaks if windows.h is included before a conflicting dependency.

The error for this may be misleading as it may not identify the specific re-declaration as the issue.

Example:

C:\ws_moveit\src\moveit_tutorials\doc\perception_pipeline\src\cylinder_segment.cpp

In this file in the MoveIt tutorials, a file which included the window.h header (pcl) was included before a file which included (marker.h via planning_scene_interface.h). This is problematic because marker.h defines DELETE as an enum member while DELETE is also defined as a macro in windows.h.

In this case the build error was:

C:\opt\ros\melodic\x64\include\visualization_msgs/Marker.h(132): error C2059: syntax error: 'constant'

Fix:

Include any headers which define the conflicting variable (i.e. DELETE) above/before any headers which include windows.h.

C\C++ Warnings

The Microsoft Visual Studio compiler has strict type checking enabled by default. Here are some common warnings.

Compiler Warning (level 1) C4305 - Truncation

Use appropriate casts ensuring accuracy of the conversion.

See here for more details.

Compiler Warning (level 4) C4100 - Unreferenced formal parameter

Either remove the variable, or reference it in a noop block.

uint8_t unused;
unused;

See here for more details.

Python

Shebang

Windows does not support Shebang character sequence for automatically launching an interpreter. To support Python nodes on Windows, a few changes need to be made.

Shebang in ROS nodes

If a ROS node uses Python, please rename the file with the .py extension.

Shebang in command line commands

If you are producing a command line application which will be installed with Pip, please add a windows wrapper.

CMake General

gtest-NOTFOUND

This occurs when linking against gtest instead of ${GTEST_LIBRARIES}.

  target_link_libraries(rtest
      ${GTEST_LIBRARIES}
      ${catkin_LIBRARIES}
  )

CMAKE_C_COMPILER or CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER error

When Visual Studio upgrades, it changes the path to the compilers. If you have previously built a ROS workspace, you'll see an error like this:

CMake Error in CMakeLists.txt:
  The CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:

    C:/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft Visual Studio/2019/Community/VC/Tools/MSVC/14.22.27905/bin/Hostx64/x64/cl.exe

Cause

This is caused by a stale CMake cache.

Fix

Remove the build, devel and install directories and rebuild.

CMake Tip - verbose output

When debugging a build failure, it is sometimes helpful to have verbose logging enabled:

catkin_make -DCMAKE_VERBOSE_MAKEFILE=ON

Start ROS on Boot

Once you are done developing your robot and want it to automatically start on boot, you'll want to use the Windows Task Scheduler to start the task.

  • Create a Windows command file, which includes the ROS environment and Install environment, c:\catkin_ws\start_ros.bat 

    call c:\opt\ros\melodic\x64\setup.bat
call c:\catkin_ws\install\setup.bat
roslaunch <package> <launch file>

  • Use the command Schtasks, to add a task which calls this script: 

    schtasks /Create /RU <User> /RP <password> /SC ONLOGON /TN ROS /TR "c:\catkin_ws\start_ros.bat"

  • Enable Windows Auto logon Use the Autologon documentation at Microsoft's Support website to conigure autologon.

Alternatively use the Autologon Sysinternals tool to configure autologon from the command line.

The next time the system starts, the ROS task will run.