Ros2 Humble - Translated flatland viz tools to rviz plugins

[TheZambi]

This PR adds a new package to flatland called flatland_rviz_plugins that enables the smooth transition from flatland_viz to rviz.
The plugins added are:

• Pause simulation time tool;
• Spawn model;
• Interact tool that deals with interactive markers (toggles their visibility).

Note: these are already in use in our ros2 branch in our turtlebot_flatland repo.

[JoaoCostaIFG]

Added a service and rviz tool to change the simulation update rate in runtime.

[josephduchesne]

Added a service and rviz tool to change the simulation update rate in runtime.

This is a really neat feature. Probably a bit dangerous but no more than changing the update rate normally is. I can see a typo in calling the service causing really funny errors! I look forward to trying it out.

[josephduchesne]

Added a service and rviz tool to change the simulation update rate in runtime.

Would it also make sense to control the simulation timestep in the same way (either as the same service call, or a similar one)? The two variables somewhat work together, since the real-time factor is timestep*update rate.

[josephduchesne]

For any new cpp/hpp files, can you add the BSD 3 clause license:

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We do not have a contributor license agreement (CLA) requiring that you transfer copyright to Avidbots to merge, but we do need each file to contain an appropriate license. In this case Flatland uses BSD-3 clause (like most ROS packages), so that would be preferred.

For modified files, the existing license headers is fine. Any contributions merged under those existing licenses are assumed (and possibly required) to be under the existing header license. (It would be impractical to license portions of code in the same file under different licenses). Copyright could be done line by line, but I don't think anyone wants that much beurocratic overhead.

I'm trying to figure out why I'm getting a large number of lint errors (including missing copyright headers) on my local build and not on the github action for this branch (well, actually I'm getting different errors on githubactions).

Locally I'm running:
colcon test --event-handlers desktop_notification- status- terminal_title- console_cohesion+ --executor sequential --ctest-args -j1 --packages-skip flatland_viz which is fairly similar to what the github action runs.

Todo items:

• Add copyright headers to all new cpp/hpp files
• Fix cpplint formatting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gIyu09UEC8 explains how to automatically update the style of source files. I'm not 100% sure this will fix everything but it might be a good start)
• Fix lint_cmake and uncrustify errors if possible (also output on my machine running the above colcon test ... command

[JoaoCostaIFG]

Added a service and rviz tool to change the simulation update rate in runtime.

Would it also make sense to control the simulation timestep in the same way (either as the same service call, or a similar one)? The two variables somewhat work together, since the real-time factor is timestep*update rate.

Ye that makes sense. It could probably be part of the same menu/rviz plugin.

[TheZambi]

We've finished correcting the errors that the code had, however there were some that left us not knowing how to proceed:

• The copyright license has been added to the new files, however when executing the tests, a warning appears indicating that the copyright isn't present, thus failing the tests.
• Other tests that use cppcheck 2.7 fail: “cppcheck 2.7 has known performance issues and therefore will not be used, set the AMENT_CPPCHECK_ALLOW_SLOW_VERSIONS environment variable to override this.”. Setting the environment variable leads to passing the tests.
• Cpplint forces an include order for the included libraries, and the first library to be in included must be a .h corresponding to the .cpp including it (for example, load_model_dialog.cpp must have load_model_dialog.h as it's first include). Since we do not have a load_model_dialog.h created, but a load_model_dialog.hpp, this check also fails.

[josephduchesne]

@TheZambi I have created a copy of your branch and fixed the various errors a few different ways:

• I've disabled the fairlky agressive ament linting which isn't compatible with our existing coding style
• I have added the ALLOW_SLOW_VERSIONS flag to the CI parameters

I also tweaked the header paths and includes for flatland_rviz_plugins since they were a bit inconsistant (some headers in the src folder, others in include, some with source relative paths, others include relative). I think they're consistant now. Local testing, building and CI all seem to work but I haven't tested running flatland yet.

Can you merge my branch into yours and push it so this PR updates to include both changes? https://github.com/avidbots/flatland/tree/ros2-rviz-plugins

I'd like to merge my changes in the flatland_turtlebot master branch into your proposed Humble/ros2 port, along with pointing it at nav2, which if combined correctly should allow a turtlebot 1 like simulation in ros2 with nav2 and flatland. That said, I don't think I'll be able to get to that soon. If you want to try, feel free. My most recent merge into master bundles a lot of the now deprecated turtlebot1 launchfiles and dependencies so that turtlebot_flatland isn't dependant on the turtlebot repo as much. This might help with the nav2/ros2 version.

[TheZambi]

Finished pushing the merge. Sadly, we will most likely not be able to look into the other merges that deal with the turtle_bot as the members of the group are starting to work on the master's thesis, and we will be occupied with it for the next months. Thank you for your help throughout the development and all the best.

[josephduchesne]

No problem. Thanks for the hard work. This has really helped push the ros2 version of flatland ahead. I'll see if I can get a demo repo working with ros2. Good luck with your academic persuits!