Overview

This section describes the installation process for Linux.

Target audience

Linux people who want to compile Kobuki driver, but not use ros

Procedure

Prerequirements

We use catkin to build. First of all you need to install some basic dependencies:

cmake - A cross-platform, open-source build system.
python - Python is a general-purpose, interpreted high-level programming language.
wstool - Workspace tool for downloading sources.
catkin_pkg - A Python runtime library for catkin.
empy - A Python template library.
nose - A Python testing framework.

sudo apt-get install python-wstool cmake python-catkin-pkg python-empy python-nose python-setuptools build-essential

If you are not on Ubuntu you can typically find cmake, python in your system repos and at worst, you can install python modules from PyPi via pip.

Refer to the Catkin documentation for more details.

Catkin workspace

Next we must prepare a catkin workspace.

mkdir kobuki_core
wstool init -j5 kobuki_core/src https://raw.github.com/yujinrobot/kobuki_core/devel/kobuki_core.rosinstall
cd kobuki_core
export PATH=`pwd`/src/catkin/bin/:${PATH}
catkin_make_isolated --install

The utility catkin_make_isolated is just a wrapper around cmake/make. The catkin_make_isolated utility has a few options to allow direct configuration of various cmake variables (CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX is a useful one, otherwise it defaults to ./install_isolated).

Testing your installation

You can test your installation by executing some of the demo and test programs provided with Kobuki driver. You must point your LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable to the installed libraries. For example, if you type the following commands, the robot should move making squares:

cd kobuki_core
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`/install_isolated/lib
./install_isolated/lib/kobuki_driver/demo_kobuki_simple_loop

Cross compiling

We still have not prepared proper cross-compiling documentation, but have done so and we will be happy to help you. It simply requires following the usual cmake specification of toolchain cmake modules.

Additional support

Do not hesitate to ask on Kobuki users list if you need additional support.