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roswtf Command-line Tool

roswtf will examine your ROS setup, such as your environment variables, and look for configuration issues. If you have a ROS system online, it will look at it and check for any potential issues.

check targets

Other than the general checks, roswtf has two usages.

Checking packages or stacks

You can either run it just by typing:

$ roswtf

which will check the current package or stack for problems.

IMPORTANT: roswtf performs those checks based on the directory you run it from. For example, if you run it in the navigation stack, it will perform it's filesystem checks based on files in the navigation stack and its dependencies.

Checking a launch file

Or you can also run roswtf on a roslaunch file:

$ roswtf yourfile.launch

in which case it will check the given launch file for any potential issues.

Options

roswtf accepts the following command-line options:

• --all New in C Turtle

  • Run roswtf rules against all packages in your ROS_PACKAGE_PATH

  --no-plugins New in C Turtle

  • Disable roswtf plugins

  --offline New in Diamondback

  • Run offline tests only.

What does roswtf look for?

roswtf looks for many, many things, and the list is always growing. There are two categories of what it looks for: file-system issues and online/graph issues.

For file-system issues, roswtf looks at your environment variables, package configurations, stack configurations, and more. It can also take in a roslaunch file and attempt to find any potential configuration issues in it, such as packages that haven't been built properly.

For online issues, roswtf examines the state of your current graph and tries to find any potential issues. These issues might be unresponsive nodes, missing connections between nodes, or potential machine-configuration issues with roslaunch.

Warnings vs. errors

roswtf produces a report containing both warnings and errors based on the checks it performed. In general, warnings are something that seems odd, but may be just fine. Errors are known problems that you should probably address if you are experiencing problems.

Advanced: roswtf plugins

Please see roswtf plugin API.

Roadmap

roswtf will continue to evolve to try and diagnose more complex problems that may arise in large ROS systems. There are currently plans to do checks for multi-machine setups, as well as expand the range of its checks via the plugin API. Recommendations for checks that can be performed are always welcome.