Visual Studio Code Extension for ROS

The Visual Studio Code Extension for ROS provides support for Robot Operating System (ROS) development for ROS1 and ROS2 on Windows and Linux.

Features

Automatic ROS environment configuration.
Allows starting, stopping and viewing the ROS core status.
Automatically create catkin_make or catkin build build tasks.
Create catkin packages using catkin_create_pkg script or catkin create pkg.
Run rosrun or roslaunch
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.
Preview URDF and Xacro files.
Debug a single ROS node (C++ or Python) by attaching to the process.
Debug ROS nodes (C++ or Python) launched from a .launch file.

Commands

You can access the following commands from the Visual Studio Code command pallet, typically accessed by pressing ctrl + shift + p and typing the command name you'd like to use from the table below.

Name	Description
ROS: Create Catkin Package	Create a catkin package. You can right click on a folder in the explorer to create it in a specific location.
ROS: Create Terminal	Create a terminal with the ROS environment.
ROS: Show Status	Open a detail view showing ROS core runtime status.
ROS: Start	Start ROS1 core or ROS2 Daemon.
ROS: Stop	Terminate ROS core or ROS2 Daemon.
ROS: Update C++ Properties	Update the C++ IntelliSense configuration to include ROS and your ROS components.
ROS: Update Python Path	Update the Python IntelliSense configuration to include ROS.
ROS: Preview URDF	Preview URDF and Xacro files. The display will update after the root URDF changes are saved.
ROS: Install ROS Dependencies for this workspace using rosdep	Shortcut for `rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src -r -y`.

Tutorials and Walkthroughs

Name	Description
Attaching to a running ROS Node	Learn how to attach VSCode to a running ROS node
Debugging all ROS Nodes in a launch file	Learn how to set up VSCode to debug the nodes in a ROS Launch file
ROSCON 2019 ROS Extension Talk Video	Walkthrough of VSCode from ROSCon 2019

Getting Started

The VSCode 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 catkin or colcon workspace. The build system (e.g. catkin_make or catkin build) will automatically be confirmed from the hidden files associated with each system.

Launch Debugging

The Visual Studio Code extension for ROS supports launch debugging for ROS 1 and ROS 2 nodes. The VSCode extension currently supports debugging ROS written in Python and C++. The ROS node or nodes to be debugged must be placed in a ROS launch file with the extension .launch for ROS1 or ROS2 or with the extension .py for ROS2.

Reporting Security Issues

Security issues and bugs should be reported privately, via email, to the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) at secure@microsoft.com. You should receive a response within 24 hours. If for some reason you do not, please follow up via email to ensure we received your original message.

Further information, including the MSRC PGP key, can be found in the Security TechCenter.

Data and Telemetry

This extension collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more.

This extension respects the telemetry.enableTelemetry setting, learn more about this option.

Contribution

Contributions are always welcome! Please see our contributing guide for more details!

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

Andrew Short (@ajshort), original author
James Giller (@JamesGiller)

ROS Web Tools

This extension leverages ROS Web Tools for URDF Previewing.

Russell Toris, Julius Kammerl, David Lu, Jihoon Lee, Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, Sarah Osentoski, Mitchell Wills, and Sonia Chernova. Robot Web Tools: Efficient Messaging for Cloud Robotics. In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2015