Environment Variables

The following are environment variables that are observed by the ROS packaging system. This listing does not include environment variables for the ROS communication middleware (e.g. ROS_MASTER_URI, ROS_HOSTNAME).

Essential

ROS_PACKAGE_PATH

Path(s) to ROS packages and stacks to include in the build and runtime environment. ROS_PACKAGE_PATH can be composed of one or more paths separated by your standard OS path separator (e.g. ‘:’ on Unix-like systems). If there are multiple packages or stacks with the same name, ROS will choose the one that appears on ROS_PACKAGE_PATH first.

ROS_ROOT

This is a required environment variable, but it is only provided for backwards compatibility. Historically, it is the path to the ROS stack. For ROS Fuerte and later, it is the path to a backwards-compatibility support directory.

Optional

ROS_HOME

Override path to ROS_HOME, which is where log files and other user-specific assets are stored. By default this is ~/.ros/.

ROS_LOG_DIR

Override path to directory where log files are written. By default this is ROS_HOME/log.

ROS_TEST_RESULTS_DIR

Override path to directory where teset results are written. By default this is is ROS_HOME/test_results.

ROS_DISTRO

New in version Fuerte.

Override name of the currently active ROS distribution. By default, this value is read from ROS_ETC_DIR/distro.

ROS_ETC_DIR

New in version Fuerte.

Override path to /etc/ros directory.