rosdep

A ROS command-line tool that installs a package's system dependencies automatically from its declarations.

rosdep reads the dependencies declared in each package's package.xml across a workspace, looks them up against the mapping rules in the rosdistro repository to translate an abstract dependency name into the actual package name on the current system — say, a specific apt development library or a pip package — and then calls the matching package manager to install it. The first time it's used, you have to run sudo rosdep init and rosdep update, both of which need to reach rule files hosted on GitHub; since that often fails from mainland China's network, the Yuxiang ROS (鱼香ROS) community built rosdepc, a drop-in replacement that goes through a domestic mirror instead. Running rosdep before building is the standard first step after cloning someone else's ROS repository.

ExampleAfter cloning someone else's ROS 2 repository into src, run rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y to pull in all dependencies, then colcon build.

Also called

rosdepc

Related

ROS Workspace · Package (ROS) · colcon · FishROS One-Click Installer · Package Mirror Sources in China (pip / conda / apt / Docker mirrors) · Ubuntu Linux

Sources

ROS 2 Docs: Managing Dependencies with rosdep
ROS Wiki: rosdep