AUV-2026

This project is currently under development

Ahoy! This project contains software intended to run on the custom-built Douglas AUV to compete at RoboSub2026 on behalf of McGill Robotics.

This project is maintained by the McGill Robotics Club and was developed by its members - students of McGill University.

1. Setting Up the Dev Environment

Prerequisites

Before setting up the dev environment, you should have the following software installed:

• Docker (either through Docker Desktop or CLI)
• git installed.
• Visual Studio Code
• Visual Studio Code Remote Containers Plugin

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Method 1: VS Code Dev Containers (CPU Only)

If you have the software installed, follow these instructions:

1. git clone this repository on your local environment.

2. Open the repo in VS Code.

3. In the bottom left, you should see a little blue/green box. This will bring up the VSCode dialogue. (Keyboard Shortcut: CTRL + SHIFT + P or CMD + SHIFT + P)

4. Select "Dev Containers: Reopen in container"

5. Select the option that matches your hardware

   • AUV Dev (CPU): CPU or Integrated Graphics
   • AUV Dev (NVIDIA): NVIDIA Graphics Card

6. VS Code will automatically load necessary files and configure the dev environment. This can take minutes to load.

Once loading is complete, you're ready to develop!

Method 2: Docker CLI (Advanced)

Use this when not using VS Code as your primary text editor

1. Navigate to the dev folder:

   cd Docker/dev

2. Allow GUI windows (Linux only):

   xhost +si:localuser:root

3. Start the environment: Choose the command matching your hardware:

   • NVIDIA GPU Users (Requires NVIDIA Container Toolkit):

     docker compose up -d --build nvidia

   • Standard CPU / Integrated Graphics:

     docker compose up -d --build cpu

4. Enter the container:

   # For NVIDIA
   docker exec -it auv-dev-nvidia bash
   
   # For CPU
   docker exec -it auv-dev-cpu bash

For more details, see Docker/dev/README.md.

2. Building ROS Packages

Once inside the container, use the build script. It automatically detects if you have the ZED SDK and builds accordingly.

    cd /home/douglas/AUV-2026
    ./build.sh
    source ros2_ws/install/setup.bash

Note the script can be run from anywhere in the container and will always build inside the AUV-2026/ros2_ws folder.

Multiple build flags are available:

• ./build.sh : Default Release Build, works for most cases
• ./build.sh -c : Clean Build, removes previous build artifacts (build/, install/, log/ folders)
• ./build.sh -d : Debug Build, compiles with debug symbols and no optimizations and serial compilation
• ./build.sh -o : Offline Build, prevents CMake from attempting to download missing dependencies
• ./build.sh -p <package_name> : Build a specific package and its required dependencies (as determined by colcon)

Since the debug -d build is single-threaded for easier debugging, it may take very long to compile. As such, it should only be used in tandem with the -p flag to build a specific package. A typical debug build command would be ./build.sh -cd -p <package_name>. Note that the -c will only clean the build artifacts for the specified package and its dependencies.