Docker ROS automatic start of launch file - docker

Question

I developed a few ROS packages and I want to put the packages in a docker container because installing all the ROS packages all the time is tedious. Therefore I created a dockerfile that uses a base ROS image, installed all the necessary dependencies, copied my workspace, built the workspace in the docker container and sourced everything afterward. You can find the docker file here:
FROM ros:kinetic-ros-base
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install locales
RUN locale-gen en_US.UTF-8
ENV LANG en_US.UTF-8
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
&& rm -rf /var/likb/apt/lists/*
COPY . /catkin_ws/src/
WORKDIR /catkin_ws
RUN /bin/bash -c '. /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash; catkin_make'
RUN /bin/bash -c '. /opt/ros/kinetic/setup.bash; source devel/setup.bash'
CMD ["roslaunch", "master_launch sim_perception.launch"]
The problem is: When I run the docker container wit the "run" command, docker doesn't seem to know that I sourced my new ROS workspace and therefore it cannot launch automatically my launch script. If I run the docker container as bash script with "run -it bash" I can source my workspace again and then roslaunch my .launch file.
So can someone tell me how to write my dockerfile correctly so I launch my .launch file automatically when I run the container? Thanks!

Answer 1

From Docker Docs
Each RUN instruction is run independently and won't effect next instruction so when you run last Line no PATH are saved from ROS.
You need Source .bashrc or every environment you need using source first.
You can wrap everything you want (source command and roslaunch command) inside a sh file then just run that file at the end

Answer 2

If you review the convention of ros_entrypoint.sh you can see how best to source the workspace you would like in the docker. We're all so busy learning how to make docker and ros do the real things, it's easy to skip over some of the nuance of this interplay. This sucked forever for me; hope this is helpful for you.
I looked forever and found what seemed like only bad advice, and in the absence of an explicit standard or clear guidance I've settled into what seems like a sane approach that also allows you to control what launches at runtime with environment variables. I now consider this as the right solution for my needs.
In the Dockerfile for the image you want to set the start/launch behavior;
towards the end; you should use ADD line to insert your own ros_entrypoint.sh (example included); Set it as the ENTRYPOINT and then a CMD to run by default run something when the docker start.
note: you'll (obviously?) need to run the docker build process for these changes to be effective
Dockerfile looks like this:
all your other dockerfile ^^
.....
# towards the end
COPY ./ros_entrypoint.sh /
ENTRYPOINT ["/ros_entrypoint.sh"]
CMD ["bash"]
Example ros_entryppoint.sh:
#!/bin/bash
set -e
# setup ros environment
if [ -z "${SETUP}" ]; then
# basic ros environment
source "/opt/ros/$ROS_DISTRO/setup.bash"
else
#from environment variable; should be a absolute path to the appropriate workspaces's setup.bash
source $SETUP
fi
exec "$#"
Used in this way the docker will automatically source either the basic ros bits... or if you provide another workspace's setup.bash path in the $SETUP environment variable, it will be used in the container.
So a few ways to work with this:
From the command line prior to running docker
export SETUP=/absolute/path/to/the/setup.bash
docker run -it your-docker-image
From the command line (inline)
docker run --env SETUP=/absolute/path/to/the/setup.bash your-docker-image
From docker-compose
service-name:
network_mode: host
environment:
- SETUP=/absolute/path/to/the_workspace/devel/setup.bash #or whatever
command: roslaunch package_name launchfile_that_needed_to_be_sourced.launch
#command: /bin/bash # wake up and do something else