Isaac Apt Repository

Overview

NVIDIA Isaac Apt Repository built on our CDN (Content Distribution Network) hosts the following categories of packages for all users.

All Isaac ROS packages pre-built for the currently supported platforms.
ROS 2 Humble packages for Jetson users running JetPack 5.x

For those users interested in running third-party, community-contributed ROS packages other than Isaac ROS packages on JetPack 5.x (based on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal), NVIDIA runs an instance of the official ROS Buildfarm to produce ROS 2 Humble packages back-ported for Ubuntu 20.04 Focal.
Auxiliary packages to improve developer experience or to support a legacy OS.

Isaac ROS Buildfarm

The Isaac ROS Buildfarm is a fork of the official ROS Buildfarm with several modifications to build nearly all ROS 2 packages for Ubuntu 20.04 Focal and make them available on the Isaac Apt Repository.

Setting up Isaac Apt Repository

The Isaac Apt Repository is already configured in the Isaac ROS Dev Docker containers, but if you want to setup the Isaac Apt Repository as an apt source in a different environment or for the China CDN, perform the following steps:

Set Locale

locale  # check for UTF-8

sudo apt update && sudo apt install locales
sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
sudo update-locale LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8

locale  # verify settings

Install Dependencies

sudo apt update && sudo apt install gnupg wget
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository universe

Setup Source

Register the GPG key with apt. Two options are listed below, one for .com (US CDN) and one for .cn (China CDN) - choose whichever you prefer.

Add the repository to your apt sources.

wget -qO - https://isaac.download.nvidia.com/isaac-ros/repos.key | sudo apt-key add -
grep -qxF "deb https://isaac.download.nvidia.com/isaac-ros/release-3.0 $(lsb_release -cs) release-3.0" /etc/apt/sources.list || \
echo "deb https://isaac.download.nvidia.com/isaac-ros/release-3.0 $(lsb_release -cs) release-3.0" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update

wget -qO - https://isaac.download.nvidia.cn/isaac-ros/repos.key | sudo apt-key add -
grep -qxF "deb https://isaac.download.nvidia.cn/isaac-ros/release-3.0 $(lsb_release -cs) release-3.0" /etc/apt/sources.list || \
echo "deb https://isaac.download.nvidia.cn/isaac-ros/release-3.0 $(lsb_release -cs) release-3.0" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update

Next, for all other ROS 2 packages, ensure you have the official ROS apt repository sourced.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl -y
sudo curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros/rosdistro/master/ros.key -o /usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/ros-archive-keyring.gpg] http://packages.ros.org/ros2/ubuntu $(. /etc/os-release && echo $UBUNTU_CODENAME) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros2.list > /dev/null

This should allow for normal installation of all ROS 2 packages.

Install core ROS 2 Packages

sudo apt update

Per ROS 2 documentation:

Desktop Install (Recommended): ROS, RViz, demos, tutorials.

sudo apt install ros-humble-desktop

and/or

sudo apt install ros-humble-desktop-full

ROS-Base Install (Bare Bones): Communication libraries, message packages, command line tools. No GUI tools.

sudo apt install ros-humble-ros-base

Development tools: Compilers and other tools to build ROS packages

sudo apt install ros-dev-tools