some tender love and care for our poor helper scripts

Author: ethanholter

tools/misc/enable_vcan.sh

@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+# this script enables a virtual CAN interface (vcan0) on the system to be
+# used for testing CAN bus applications without physical hardware. You can
+# view outgoing CAN messages using `candump vcan0` from the can-utils package.
+
+sudo modprobe vcan
+sudo ip link add dev vcan0 type vcan
+sudo ip link set up vcan0

tools/ros/build.sh

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ shopt -s globstar nullglob
 
 WS_DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )/../.." &> /dev/null && pwd )" # workspace directory
 
-# colcon has a very weird cli so instead we manually concatenate all the logs in the event of a faliure.
+# colcon has a very weird cli so instead we manually concatenate all the logs in the event of a failure.
 # This results in a much more readable output.
 function print_stderr_logs () {
     for file in $WS_DIR/log/latest/**/stderr.log;
@@ -20,21 +20,50 @@ function print_stderr_logs () {
     done
 }
 
-# clean up generated urdf before building. Sometimes when building the urdf is not properly generated if the file already exists.
-# This workaround forces the urdf to freshly generated each build
-rm -f "${WS_DIR}"/src/uirover_description/urdf/*.urdf
+# Auto detect and install mandatory colcon packages if not already installed
+UPDATED=false
+if dpkg-query -W python3-colcon-common-extensions &> /dev/null; then
+    echo "colcon-common-extensions is already installed"
+else
+    echo "Installing colcon-common-extensions"
+    
+    if [ "$UPDATED" = false ]; then
+        sudo apt update
+        UPDATED=true
+    fi
+    sudo apt install -y python3-colcon-common-extensions
+fi
+if dpkg-query -W python3-colcon-mixin &> /dev/null; then
+    echo "colcon-mixin is already installed"
+else
+    echo "Installing colcon-mixin"
+    
+    if [ "$UPDATED" = false ]; then
+        sudo apt update
+        UPDATED=true
+    fi
+    sudo apt install -y python3-colcon-mixin
+fi
+MIXIN_URL="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/colcon/colcon-mixin-repository/master/index.yaml"
+if ! colcon mixin list 2>/dev/null | grep -q "$MIXIN_URL"; then
+    colcon mixin add default "$MIXIN_URL"
+fi
 
 # desktop_notification- console_stderr- disable annoying features of colcon
-(cd $WS_DIR && colcon build \
+# --continue-on-error continues building other packages even if one fails
+# --parallel-workers 0 uses all available CPU cores
+# --symlink-install symlinks files so we don't have to rebuild after every change
+# --mixin compile-commands generates WS_DIR/build/compile_commands.json for vscode and other IDEs
+COLCON_ARGS="--mixin compile-commands \
 --continue-on-error \
---cmake-args \
--DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
 --parallel-workers 0 \
 --symlink-install \
---event-handlers desktop_notification- console_stderr- || print_stderr_logs)
+--event-handlers desktop_notification- console_stderr-"
 
-echo "export RCUTILS_COLORIZED_OUTPUT=1" >> "${WS_DIR}/install/setup.bash"
+(cd $WS_DIR && colcon build $COLCON_ARGS || print_stderr_logs)
 
+# Enable colored output for ROS2 command line tools
+echo "export RCUTILS_COLORIZED_OUTPUT=1" >> "${WS_DIR}/install/setup.bash"
 
 # Ideally we would automatically source the setup.bash file after building, but this is causing bash tab completion to completetly crash gnome-terminal.
 # Not sure why, but in case this ever gets fixed, here is the line to do it: