This demo program showcases use of the Bazel build system to run a client program with the Gazebo simulator.

Bazel build support was first available in the Jetty release and has been backported to the Ionic release (Gazebo releases). Gazebo Bazel packages are made available from the Bazel Central Registry, which is the default registry used by Bazel. Most Gazebo packages natively support both CMake and Bazel builds (e.g. Gz Sim BUILD.bazel). However, note that bazel build support is still work in progress. Notably, the Gz Gui package, Gz Sim Gui client and gui plugins are not available in Bazel build.

Running the demo

Install Gazebo Jetty

Follow instructions to either install Gazebo Jetty from source or from binary: https://gazebosim.org/docs/jetty/install/

Install Bazel

Install bazelisk, which is a version manager for bazel: https://github.com/bazelbuild/bazelisk?tab=readme-ov-file#installation

Clone and build the demo client program

Clone this repo and make sure it builds:

git clone https://github.com/shameekganguly/jetty_bazel_demo &&
cd jetty_bazel_demo &&
bazel build -c opt spawn_model &&
cd ..

Note: You may have to specify additional flags for MacOS if you run into compilation errors, see below.

Launch Gz Sim

Launch Gz Sim with the Jetty demo world on a new terminal:

git clone https://github.com/gazebosim/jetty_demo && \
cd jetty_demo/Jetty_Warehouse && \
GZ_SIM_RESOURCE_PATH=../../jetty_bazel_demo/resources \
GZ_IP=127.0.0.1 \
gz sim -v 4 -r jetty.sdf

Note that the GZ_SIM_RESOURCE_PATH env var is set to point to the jetty_bazel_demo/resources directory so that the demo resources can be loaded from disk in Gz Sim server. Also note that the Gz Transport env var GZ_IP is set to 127.0.0.1 above as well as in BUILD.bazel to bind to the localhost address.

Note that MacOS users will have to launch the gui client and server processes separately, see below.

Run the demo client

Run the demo client:

bazel run -c opt  spawn_model -- --pose 5 18 5 0 0 0

The spawn pose below is picked to suit the Jetty demo world. Feel free to try out other values!

You should see the word "BAZEL" drop inside the warehouse next to the cargo bay, then disappear and drop again repeatedly until the client program is stopped.

On MacOS:

Due to a known bug, the demo can only be run with Gazebo Ionic on MacOS: https://gazebosim.org/docs/ionic/install_osx/

Also note that running Gz Sim on MacOS requires the server and gui client processes to be run on separate terminals.

# On terminal 1
GZ_IP=127.0.0.1 gz sim -v 4 -g

# On terminal 2
GZ_SIM_RESOURCE_PATH=../../jetty_bazel_demo/resources \
GZ_IP=127.0.0.1 \
gz sim -v 4 -r -s jetty.sdf

# On terminal 3
bazel run --macos_minimum_os=15.5 --features=-layering_check -c opt \
spawn_model -- --pose 5 18 5 0 0 0