Bare-metal Installation

Attention

This installation method is not recommended for general use. See Usage for better alternatives.

This page describes steps to use Cake Robot Library by installing it as a Python library. It also describes steps to install runtime requirements manually.

This installation method is only recommended for CRL core developers. This page also serves as a starting point to understand how bundler works.

Platforms

The instructions are for both Ubuntu 20.04 and Archlinux. The Ubuntu setup is similar to what bundler does, and is considered more stable than that of Archlinux.

Fixed Installation Steps

These steps are fixed, in contrast to the steps described in the next section that vary depending on your project.

  1. Install Cake Robot Library

    pip3 install crl

    Note

    To install from source, run:

    git clone https://github.com/cakerobotics/crl
cd crl
pip3 install -e .

    Note

    It is good practice to use a virtual environment, but watch for the following caveats:

    1. You should create venv only after sourcing ROS base layer, i.e.:

      source /opt/ros/foxy/setup.bash
python -m venv venv --system-site-packages

      Also note the --system-site-packages argument. This allows venv to access base ROS libraries like rclpy.

    2. You need to manually add the source /opt/ros/foxy/setup.bash to the beginning of your venv/bin/activate script.

    3. You may need extra configuration for your IDE to work correctly. For example, if you use VSCode with PyLint and PyRight, you probably want to add these lines to .vscode/settings.json:

      "python.pythonPath": "venv/bin/python",
"python.analysis.extraPaths": ["/opt/ros2/foxy/lib/python3.9/site-packages"],
"python.terminal.activateEnvInCurrentTerminal": true,

      and this line to .env:

      PYTHONPATH=/opt/ros2/foxy/lib/python3.9/site-packages

  2. Install ROS 2 (Rolling)

    Official instructions for Ubuntu are available here.

    yay -S ros2-git
printf "\nexport ROS_DOMAIN_ID=42\nsource /opt/ros2/foxy/setup.bash\n" >> ~/.bashrc

  3. Install extra ROS 2 packages

    apt-get install ?

    yay -S ?

    Full list of these packages:

    • gw

Dynamic Installation Steps

These steps depend on the requirements of the specific project you want to run. Therefore, you may need to come back to this section as your project evolves.

  1. Install PyPi packages (e.g. numpy, …) that you have used in your project code.

    pip3 install <packages>

    Side-note

    Bundler detects the list of required packages by reading the key pip_requirements from the props file.

Running the Robot Program

  1. Navigate to the directory of your project:

    cd my-first-cake-project

  2. Run the following command:

    sudo cake

    This will start the robot described in your main.py.

    Note

    If just you want to run the program in a simulation environment:

    • Add --sim argument to cake command. This will tell cake to disable hardware operations, and communicate with a simulation container for actuator/sensor operations.

    • Before running, make sure that Gazebo is installed.

    • You can drop sudo as hardware operations are disabled.