Robotics Development Extensions for ROS 2 within Visual Studio Code

This is a Visual Studio Code Extension that provides debugging support for Robot Operating System 2 (ROS 2) development ROS 2 on Windows, Linux and MacOS. The Robot Operating System is a trademark of Open Robotics.

NOTE: This extension is rebranded and re-released by Ranch Hand Robotics, a company owned by the maintainer of the ms-iot VSCode ROS Extension with permission from Microsoft. The source extension was split into 3 parts - ROS 1, ROS 2 and a URDF editor.

Features

• Automatic ROS environment configuration.
• Allows starting, stopping and viewing the ROS core status.
• Automatically create colcon build and test tasks.
• Run and Debug ROS Launch Files
• Resolve dependencies with rosdep shortcut
• Syntax highlighting for .msg, .urdf and other ROS files.
• Automatically add the ROS C++ include and Python import paths.
• Format C++ using the ROS clang-format style.
• Debug a single ROS node (C++ or Python) by [attaching to the process][debug_support-attach].
• Debug ROS nodes (C++ or Python) [launched from a .launch.py file][debug_support-launch].
• Configure Intellisense
• Support for alternative shells (e.g. fish, zsh, etc.) for ROS 2.
• (Preview) Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server, allowing LLMs to introspect a running ROS 2 system.
• (Preview) Lifecycle Node Support, allowing you to manage the lifecycle of ROS 2 nodes through the Dashboard.

Getting Started

The VS Code ROS extension will attempt to detect and automatically configure the workspace for the appropriate ROS Distro.

The extension will automatically start when you open a ROS 2 workspace.

Migrating from ms-iot/vscode-ros

If you are migrating from the ms-iot/vscode-ros extension, consider the following:

• Launch.json - To support splitting the ROS 1 and ROS 2 extensions, the launch task name in launch.json has been changed to ros2.

• URDF Editor - The URDF editor has been split into a separate extension. If you were using the URDF editor, you will need to install the Robot Developer Extension for URDF/Xacro.

• ROS 1 - If you were using the ROS 1 extension, you will need to install the Robot Developer Extension for ROS 1.

Documentation, Tutorials, Troubleshooting

Please see the documentation site at Robotics Developer Extensions for ROS 2 Documentation

Support

If you encounter any issues with this extension, the following resources are provided:

Github Issues

Bugs and feature requests are handled through Github Issues in the Repository. If you find that you are hitting the same issue as someone else, please give a :+1: or comment on an existing issue. Please provide as much details as possible, including an isolated reproduction of the issue or a pointer to an online repository.

Discussions

Github Discussions are provided for community driven general guidance, walkthroughs, or support.

Sponsor

If you find this extension useful, please consider sponsoring Ranch Hand Robotics to help support the development of this extension and other open source projects.

Contribution

Contributions are always welcome! Please see our [contributing guide][CONTRIBUTING.md] for more details!

A big Thank you! to everyone that have helped make this extension better!

• Andrew Short (@ajshort), original author
• James Giller (@JamesGiller)
• PickNikRobotics (@PickNikRobotics) for code formatting
• Microsoft (@ms-iot) for curating the ms-iot extension