headless.md

Headless WSL + ROS + GzWeb

WSL + x-server can work quite nice, but it requires some twidling.
Gazebo native client is a brutal cpu hog, so a better option to display the simulation is to use the Gazebo web client, GzWeb

Now we can use wsl in it's normal headless mode and let it host a web server and view the simulation in a browser from the windows side.

Installation

WSL

1. Be sure to be on Windows build 1809 or later
   You can use windows update assistant to force an upgrade to one of the major builds.
   If you do force an upgrade then make sure to run windows update after the upgrade has been completed.

2. Use Ubuntu 18.04
   For installation see Windows Subsystem for Linux Documentation
   Then have a look at how to set up ssh and a nice terminal in the repo readme

ROS

1. Install ROS distro
   Follow the official instructions for how to install Melodic.
   Choose to install the feature Desktop-Full to include Gazebo 9 (the simulator) with all the libraries you will need.

2. Configure ROS environment
   Follow the official instructions

3. Add ROS environment and workspace configuration to your shell session script
   Add the following to .zshrc to ensure ROS environment and workspace are ready for each new session:

   # Run ROS environment and workspace setup
   source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.zsh
   source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.zsh
   

   Note that I have chosen to use the zsh setup, there are similar files for bash etc.

GzWeb

Follow the official GzWeb installation instructions with some exceptions:

1. Exception - Do not install any Gazebo version
   You have everything you need if you installed ROS with the Desktop-Full feature.

2. Exception - The nodejs npm nodejs-legacy dependency installation
   You might want to control the nodejs installation using a node virtual environment manager like nvm or n.
   I went with n as there supposedly are some issues with nvm and Gazebo. You can have a look at my install of nodejs and related tooling in the ../nodejs/bootstrap.sh script.