PoC: building Autoware with Pixi + robostack

[VRichardJP]

I see there is recently a lot of traction about pixi and robostack:

• feat: dependency version pinning for reproducible builds #6862
• https://github.com/orgs/autowarefoundation/discussions/6891
• https://github.com/orgs/autowarefoundation/discussions/6861
• https://github.com/orgs/autowarefoundation/discussions/6621

It does not seem anyone has proposed a way to build Autoware with pixi yet. I was bored so I decided I would try. I have managed to build almost all autoware packages, except for rviz plugins (broken), cuda packages (not detected) and tests (didn't try).

You can try it out on this fork: https://github.com/VRichardJP/autoware/tree/feat_pixi_build. See https://github.com/VRichardJP/autoware/blob/feat_pixi_build/README_PIXI.md for setup details.

While pixi and robostack are promising, I find there is currently a lot of (unecessary) integration friction:

• Packages on Robostack depend on ros2-distro-mutex, which imposes newer library versions than what is normally available in native ROS setups, for example PCL 1.15 and Boost 1.88. This is the cause of a lot of compilation errors, as many parts of the autoware codebase rely on deprecated features which have been removed in newer library versions. I had to update the code. See https://github.com/VRichardJP/autoware/tree/feat_pixi_build/patches
• Similarly, using a slightly different compiler/stdlib causes some compilation errors. Typically, autoware relies on C++ extensions which are not always enabled by default. Again, patching was necessary.
• Some ROS packages are missing on robostack or have conflicting dependencies (e.g. due to ros2-distro-mutex mismatch), so I imported and built them along autoware (see repositories/pixi.toml).
• Some system dependencies are missing on conda-forge so I built then manually using conda. See https://github.com/VRichardJP/autoware/tree/feat_pixi_build/recipes
• I could not manage to build rviz plugins due to some Qt5/Qt6 mix. If I understand correctly, in the current Robostack state, PCL pulls Qt6 through VTK, but Rviz is compiled against Qt5, which causes the environment to be broken: you cannot both depend on pcl and rviz because of Qt version mismatching.

[mitsudome-r]

@VRichardJP Nice work!
Have you tried running Autoware? CUDA Packages aren't available, but I thought maybe we could try planning simulator and only do visualization using the default rviz plugins.

[VRichardJP]

I can run Rviz, set the vehicle position and goal, however behavior_velocity_playyer containers dies on startup so I can't get a path:

[component_container_mt-26] added a slot with 1 modules
[component_container_mt-26] external_request_lane_change_left registered in slot_configuration is not registered, skipping
[component_container_mt-26] external_request_lane_change_right registered in slot_configuration is not registered, skipping
[component_container_mt-26] added a slot with 6 modules
[component_container_mt-26] added a slot with 1 modules
[component_container_mt-26] dynamic_obstacle_avoidance registered in slot_configuration is not registered, skipping
[INFO] [launch_ros.actions.load_composable_nodes]: Loaded node '/planning/scenario_planning/lane_driving/behavior_planning/behavior_path_planner' in container '/planning/scenario_planning/lane_driving/behavior_planning/behavior_planning_container'
[component_container_mt-26] [INFO] [1777007307.481792188] [planning.scenario_planning.lane_driving.behavior_planning.behavior_planning_container]: Load Library: /home/vrichard/projects/autoware/autoware.github/install/autoware_behavior_velocity_planner/lib/libautoware_behavior_velocity_planner_lib.so
[component_container_mt-26] [INFO] [1777007307.559674035] [planning.scenario_planning.lane_driving.behavior_planning.behavior_planning_container]: Found class: rclcpp_components::NodeFactoryTemplate<autoware::behavior_velocity_planner::BehaviorVelocityPlannerNode>
[component_container_mt-26] [INFO] [1777007307.559714612] [planning.scenario_planning.lane_driving.behavior_planning.behavior_planning_container]: Found class: rclcpp_components::NodeFactoryTemplate<autoware::behavior_velocity_planner::experimental::BehaviorVelocityPlannerNode>
[component_container_mt-26] [INFO] [1777007307.559721860] [planning.scenario_planning.lane_driving.behavior_planning.behavior_planning_container]: Instantiate class: rclcpp_components::NodeFactoryTemplate<autoware::behavior_velocity_planner::experimental::BehaviorVelocityPlannerNode>
[component_container_mt-26] *** Aborted at 1777007307 (unix time) try "date -d @1777007307" if you are using GNU date ***
[component_container_mt-26] PC: @                0x0 (unknown)
[component_container_mt-26] *** SIGSEGV (@0xa) received by PID 2842861 (TID 0x723ce2ffa6c0) from PID 10; stack trace: ***
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfc245330 (unknown)
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cec733e7e tinyxml2::XMLDocument::Identify()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cec737b4e tinyxml2::XMLNode::ParseDeep()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cec7376d5 tinyxml2::XMLDocument::LoadFile()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723caae47309 tinyxml2::XMLDocument::LoadFile()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f33715b pluginlib::ClassLoader<>::processSingleXMLPluginFile()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f3355f6 pluginlib::ClassLoader<>::determineAvailableClasses()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f33c07e pluginlib::ClassLoader<>::ClassLoader()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f33a739 autoware::behavior_velocity_planner::experimental::BehaviorVelocityPlannerManager::BehaviorVelocityPlannerManager()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f324c77 autoware::behavior_velocity_planner::experimental::BehaviorVelocityPlannerNode::BehaviorVelocityPlannerNode()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f33a2a0 std::_Construct<>()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f339d92 std::_Sp_counted_ptr_inplace<>::_Sp_counted_ptr_inplace<>()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f3399d5 std::__shared_count<>::__shared_count<>()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f3396fe std::__shared_ptr<>::__shared_ptr<>()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f3394f1 std::shared_ptr<>::shared_ptr<>()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f339396 std::make_shared<>()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723c2f33926f rclcpp_components::NodeFactoryTemplate<>::create_node_instance()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfcd008d7 rclcpp_components::ComponentManager::on_load_node()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfccfe183 std::_Function_handler<>::_M_invoke()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfcd0e152 rclcpp::AnyServiceCallback<>::dispatch()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfcd0e7cf rclcpp::Service<>::handle_request()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfcabb874 _ZNSt17_Function_handlerIFvvEZN6rclcpp8Executor15execute_serviceESt10shared_ptrINS1_11ServiceBaseEEEUlvE0_E9_M_invokeERKSt9_Any_data
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfcabccf4 rclcpp::Executor::execute_service()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfcabea6b rclcpp::Executor::execute_any_executable()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfcac4d8b rclcpp::executors::MultiThreadedExecutor::run()
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfc6ef5e4 execute_native_thread_routine
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfc29caa4 (unknown)
[component_container_mt-26]     @     0x723cfc329c6c (unknown)
[ERROR] [component_container_mt-26]: process has died [pid 2842861, exit code -11, cmd '/home/vrichard/projects/autoware/autoware.github/.pixi/envs/default/lib/rclcpp_components/component_container_mt --ros-args -r __node:=behavior_planning_container -r __ns:=/planning/scenario_planning/lane_driving/behavior_planning -p use_sim_time:=False -p wheel_radius:=0.383 -p wheel_width:=0.235 -p wheel_base:=2.79 -p wheel_tread:=1.64 -p front_overhang:=1.0 -p rear_overhang:=1.1 -p left_overhang:=0.128 -p right_overhang:=0.128 -p vehicle_height:=2.5 -p max_steer_angle:=0.7 -p use_sim_time:=False -p use_sim_time:=False -p use_sim_time:=False -p wheel_radius:=0.383 -p wheel_width:=0.235 -p wheel_base:=2.79 -p wheel_tread:=1.64 -p front_overhang:=1.0 -p rear_overhang:=1.1 -p left_overhang:=0.128 -p right_overhang:=0.128 -p vehicle_height:=2.5 -p max_steer_angle:=0.7'].