Navigating the ROS Filesystem

Navigating the ROS Filesystem

First, if catkin is not already installed, we need to settle some dependencies and install catkin.

Settle dependencies:

  sudo apt-get install cmake python-catkin-pkg python-empty python-nose python-setuptools libgtest-dev build-essential

Install catkin:

  sudo apt-get install ros-hydro-catkin

Now we can focus on navigation. Here is a list of commands to navigate around the ROS files and folders.

• To find the path of a package: rospack find [package-name]

Example:

  rospack find roscpp

• To change directory: roscd [locationname[/subdir]]

Example:

  roscd roscpp

• To see your working (current) directory:

  pwd

• To see your ROS environment path:

  echo $ROS_PACKAGE_PATH

• To move to the folder ROS stores its logs:

  roscd log

• To see contents of a particular package: rosls [locationname[/subdir]]

Example:

  rosls roscpp_tutorials

• TAB completion is also supported.