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Development Environment Setup

Set up your IDE and tools for AirStack development. This guide assumes you've completed Getting Started and understand Key Concepts.

System Requirements

Host Machine:

  • OS: Ubuntu 22.04/24.04 LTS (recommended)
  • CPU: 8+ cores
  • RAM: 16GB minimum, 32GB+ recommended
  • GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3070+ for Isaac Sim
  • Storage: 100GB+ free SSD space

Software:

  • Docker with NVIDIA Container Toolkit (installed via airstack install)
  • Git with SSH keys
  • VSCode (recommended) or your preferred IDE

IDE Configuration

VSCode provides excellent ROS 2 and C++ support. When you open the AirStack folder, VSCode will prompt you to install recommended extensions from .vscode/extensions.json.

Key Extensions:

  • ROS extension (for ROS 2 development)
  • C/C++ extension (Microsoft)
  • Python extension
  • Docker extension (for container management)
  • CMake Tools
  • YAML extension

Settings:

VSCode is pre-configured for AirStack in .vscode/settings.json. This includes:

  • ROS 2 workspace setup
  • C++ IntelliSense configuration
  • CMake integration
  • Python path configuration

Debugging Setup

For debugging ROS 2 nodes inside containers, see VSCode Debugging Guide.

Workspace Aliases

Inside robot containers, several aliases simplify development:

bws    # Build workspace (alias for colcon build)
sws    # Source workspace (alias for source install/setup.bash)
cws    # Clean workspace (removes build/install/log)

These are defined in robot/.bashrc and available in all robot containers.

Development Tips

Quick iteration: 

# Start without auto-launch
AUTOLAUNCH=false airstack up robot-desktop-desktop

# In another terminal, build and test
docker exec airstack-robot-desktop-1 bash -c "bws --packages-select my_package && sws && ros2 launch my_package test.launch.xml"

Interactive development: 

# Connect to container
airstack connect robot

# Inside container, iterate quickly
# working dir is /root/AirStack/robot/ros_ws
bws --packages-select my_package
sws
ros2 launch my_package test.launch.xml

Build with debug symbols: 

docker exec airstack-robot-desktop-1 bash -c "bws --packages-select my_package --cmake-args '-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug'"

See Key Concepts for the full development loop.