Warning

You're reading the documentation for a version of ROS 2 that has reached its EOL (end-of-life), and is no longer officially supported. If you want up-to-date information, please have a look at Jazzy.

RHEL (binary)

This page explains how to install ROS 2 on RHEL from a pre-built binary package.

Note

The pre-built binary does not include all ROS 2 packages. All packages in the ROS base variant are included, and only a subset of packages in the ROS desktop variant are included. The exact list of packages are described by the repositories listed in this ros2.repos file.

There are also RPM packages available.

System Requirements

We currently support RHEL 8 64-bit.

Enable required repositories

The rosdep database contains packages from the EPEL and PowerTools repositories, which are not enabled by default. They can be enabled by running:

sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(config-manager)' epel-release -y
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools

Note

This step may be slightly different depending on the distribution you are using. Check the EPEL documentation: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/epel/#_quickstart

Installing prerequisites

There are a few packages that must be installed in order to get and unpack the binary release.

sudo dnf install tar bzip2 wget -y

Downloading ROS 2

  • Go to the releases page

  • Download the latest package for RHEL; let’s assume that it ends up at ~/Downloads/ros2-package-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2.

    • Note: there may be more than one binary download option which might cause the file name to differ.

  • Unpack it:

    mkdir -p ~/ros2_galactic
cd ~/ros2_galactic
tar xf ~/Downloads/ros2-package-linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

Installing and initializing rosdep

sudo dnf install -y python3-rosdep
sudo rosdep init
rosdep update

Installing the missing dependencies

ROS 2 packages are built on frequently updated RHEL systems. It is always recommended that you ensure your system is up to date before installing new packages.

sudo dnf update

Set your rosdistro according to the release you downloaded.

rosdep install --from-paths ~/ros2_galactic/ros2-linux/share --ignore-src -y --skip-keys "cyclonedds fastcdr fastrtps python3-babeltrace python3-mypy rmw_connextdds rmw_fastrtps_dynamic_cpp rti-connext-dds-5.3.1 urdfdom_headers"

Install additional DDS implementations (optional)

If you would like to use another DDS or RTPS vendor besides the default, you can find instructions here.

Environment setup

Source the setup script

Set up your environment by sourcing the following file.

 # Replace ".bash" with your shell if you're not using bash
 # Possible values are: setup.bash, setup.sh, setup.zsh
. ~/ros2_galactic/ros2-linux/setup.bash

Try some examples

In one terminal, source the setup file and then run a C++ talker:

. ~/ros2_galactic/ros2-linux/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

In another terminal source the setup file and then run a Python listener:

. ~/ros2_galactic/ros2-linux/setup.bash
ros2 run demo_nodes_py listener

You should see the talker saying that it’s Publishing messages and the listener saying I heard those messages. This verifies both the C++ and Python APIs are working properly. Hooray!

Next steps after installing

Continue with the tutorials and demos to configure your environment, create your own workspace and packages, and learn ROS 2 core concepts.

Additional RMW implementations (optional)

The default middleware that ROS 2 uses is Cyclone DDS, but the middleware (RMW) can be replaced at runtime. See the guide on how to work with multiple RMWs.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting techniques can be found here.

Uninstall

  1. If you installed your workspace with colcon as instructed above, “uninstalling” could be just a matter of opening a new terminal and not sourcing the workspace’s setup file. This way, your environment will behave as though there is no Galactic install on your system.

  2. If you’re also trying to free up space, you can delete the entire workspace directory with:

    rm -rf ~/ros2_galactic