🚀 ROS 2 App Launcher

A graphical launcher for ROS 2 that makes it simple to discover, run, and manage executables and launch files in your ROS 2 workspaces.
No more memorizing long ros2 run or ros2 launch commands, just point it to your workspace and click!

✨ Features

• 🔍 Automatic Workspace Scanning

  • Detects ROS 2 packages under a given root folder (--root).
  • Finds both source-tree packages and installed packages.

• ⚙️ Executables Management

  • Lists executables available in each package.
  • Run them with ros2 run <pkg> <exe> directly from the GUI.
  • Add extra arguments in the provided input field.
  • Filters out non-executable assets (like .png).

• 🚀 Launch Files Management

  • Detects .launch.py, .launch.xml, .launch.yaml, and files ending with _launch.*.
  • Works for both source (./launch/) and installed (share/<pkg>/launch/) packages.
  • Automatically parses and prompts for launch arguments (Python, XML, YAML).
  • Provides a dialog box where you can override default argument specification before launching.

• 📝 Custom Launch

  • Enter either a path or a <package> <launch_file> spec.
  • Supports additional arguments.

• 🖥️ Handy Shortcuts

  • Launch RViz2 with one click.
  • Launch rqt_graph.
  • Launch rqt (plugins).

• 🎨 Desktop Integration

  • Installs as a desktop app with its own icon.
  • Launchable from your system’s application menu.
  • Search "ROS 2 App Launcher" in your desktop environment.

• 🔧 No More Manual Sourcing

  • The app automatically sources both the ROS2 distro and workspace setup.bash files.
  • Works out of the box — no extra steps needed.

📂 Project structure

• assets (save figures and scripts)
• ros2_app_launcher.py (Main Python script (GUI))
• desktop_setup.sh (Setup script for desktop app)
• README.md (Documentation)

⚙️ Installing

git clone https://github.com/kr1zzo-NTNU/ROS2_app_launcher.git

📋 Requirements

• ROS2 (tested with Jazzy, compatible with Humble/Foxy).
• Python 3.9+
• Tkinter for GUI:

  sudo apt install python3-tk
  

▶️ Running the code

Run from the workspace root directory:

python3 ros2_app_launcher.py --root ~/

Run from inside your workspace for a simplified package tree:

python3 ros2_app_launcher.py --root ~/path_to_your_ws/my_ros2_ws

🖼️ Setting Up a desktop app

chmod +x desktop_setup.sh
./desktop_setup.sh

💻 Setting Up Desired Terminal and ROS2 distro

In the code, you can set up the preferred terminal by placing it first in the list in TERMINAL list. For example, if Terminator is listed first, the script will try to use it. If it isn’t installed, it will fall back to the next available option. Also you can set default ROS2 distro by chagning DEFAULT_ROS_SETUP argument:

# ----------------------------- Config (edit to taste) ----------------------------
DEFAULT_ROS_SETUP = "/opt/ros/jazzy/setup.bash"   # change to your distro if needed
DEFAULT_WS_SETUP = ""                              # blank -> auto-detect upward install/setup.bash
TERMINALS = [
    ["terminator", "-e", "bash -lc '{CMD}; exec bash'"],
    ["gnome-terminal", "--", "bash", "-lc", "{CMD}; exec bash"],
    ["x-terminal-emulator", "-e", "bash", "-lc", "{CMD}; exec bash"],
    ["konsole", "-e", "bash", "-lc", "{CMD}; exec bash"],
    ["xterm", "-e", "bash", "-lc", "{CMD}; read -p 'Press enter to close...' && exit"],
    ["kitty", "bash", "-lc", "{CMD}; exec bash"],
    ["alacritty", "-e", "bash", "-lc", "{CMD}; exec bash"],
]
...

📧 Credits

Academic Title	Author	GitHub	e-mail
PhD Candidate	Enio Krizman	@kr1zzo	enio.krizman@ntnu.no / krizman.enio@outlook.com

Academic Title	Mentor Name	e-mail
Professor	Asgeir Johan Sørensen	asgeir.sorensen@ntnu.no
Professor	Martin Ludvigsen	martin.ludvigsen@ntnu.no

© Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Department of Marine Technology

© The Applied Underwater Robotics Laboratory (AURLab)