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Installing additional software

Prerequisites:

  • Ubuntu >= 20.04
  • cmake
  • sudo apt install cmake
  • numpy
  • pip install numpy

Notes

If you're installing things on a low-memory machine, cmake may fail during the build process for Astrobee or Bullet. If this happens, try building it again with a -j1 flag

Root access is required for both the ROS install and the Astrobee install.

Pyenv

This is what I use to manage my virtual environments and python versions (uv, conda, and more also work)

curl https://pyenv.run | bash

Then, set up ~/.bashrc -- Make sure the following lines are included

export PYENV_ROOT="$HOME/.pyenv"
command -v pyenv >/dev/null || export PATH="$PYENV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"
eval "$(pyenv init -)"
eval "$(pyenv virtualenv-init -)"

If the Pyenv Python install fails and warns about things not being installed, run this command to make sure the dependencies are up to date. (Then, retry the command that failed)

sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends make build-essential libssl-dev zlib1g-dev libbz2-dev libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev wget curl llvm libncurses5-dev xz-utils tk-dev libxml2-dev libxmlsec1-dev libffi-dev liblzma-dev

ROS Noetic

wget -c https://raw.githubusercontent.com/qboticslabs/ros_install_noetic/master/ros_install_noetic.sh && chmod +x ./ros_install_noetic.sh && ./ros_install_noetic.sh

Refer to http://wiki.ros.org/noetic/Installation/Ubuntu for more info

OpenGL

This can sometimes be necessary when building Bullet from source

sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev freeglut3-dev mesa-common-dev

Blender

sudo snap install blender --classic

If snap is not available,

  1. Go to https://www.blender.org/download/
  2. Download the Linux file
  3. Extract the file to $HOME/software
  4. Run via the blender executable file in the blender folder (chmod u+x blender if it's not executable)

V-HACD

cd $HOME/software
git clone https://github.com/kmammou/v-hacd
cd v-hacd/app
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build

Meshlab

  1. Go to https://www.meshlab.net/#download
  2. Download the Linux AppImage
  3. Move the file to $HOME/software
  4. chmod u+x the AppImage to make it executable

Assimp

This is only required if you'll be modifying/converting meshes outside of Blender

sudo apt install libassimp-dev
sudo apt install assimp-utils

GMSH

This is needed for modifying/creating tetrahedral meshes 1. Go to https://gmsh.info/ and click on the Linux download link 2. Extract the contents to $HOME/software or your preferred location