Attention

This is older information related to ROS2 Humble. Newer versions, such as Jazzy, are part of the ongoing versions of this tutorial.

Create packages (ros2 pkg create)

ROS2 has a tool to help create package templates. We can get all available options by running

ros2 pkg create -h

which outputs a list of handy options to populate the package template with useful files. Namely, the four emphasized ones.

 usage: ros2 pkg create [-h] [--package-format {2,3}] [--description DESCRIPTION]
                        [--license LICENSE]
                        [--destination-directory DESTINATION_DIRECTORY]
                        [--build-type {cmake,ament_cmake,ament_python}]
                        [--dependencies DEPENDENCIES [DEPENDENCIES ...]]
                        [--maintainer-email MAINTAINER_EMAIL]
                        [--maintainer-name MAINTAINER_NAME] [--node-name NODE_NAME]
                        [--library-name LIBRARY_NAME]
                        package_name

 Create a new ROS 2 package

 positional arguments:
   package_name          The package name

 options:
   -h, --help            show this help message and exit
   --package-format {2,3}, --package_format {2,3}
                         The package.xml format.
   --description DESCRIPTION
                         The description given in the package.xml
   --license LICENSE     The license attached to this package; this can be an arbitrary
                         string, but a LICENSE file will only be generated if it is one
                         of the supported licenses (pass '?' to get a list)
   --destination-directory DESTINATION_DIRECTORY
                         Directory where to create the package directory
   --build-type {cmake,ament_cmake,ament_python}
                         The build type to process the package with
   --dependencies DEPENDENCIES [DEPENDENCIES ...]
                         list of dependencies
   --maintainer-email MAINTAINER_EMAIL
                         email address of the maintainer of this package
   --maintainer-name MAINTAINER_NAME
                         name of the maintainer of this package
   --node-name NODE_NAME
                         name of the empty executable
   --library-name LIBRARY_NAME
                         name of the empty library