This action builds a ROS, or ROS 2 workspace from source, and run colon-test on the package under test.

This action requires the following ROS development tools to be installed (and initialized if applicable) on the CI worker instance:

curl
colcon-common-extensions
colcon-lcov-result  # Optional
colcon-coveragepy-result
colcon-mixin
rosdep
vcstool

On Linux, the setup can be done through ros-tooling/setup-ros, or by running the action in a Docker image containing the appropriate binaries.

The action first assembles a workspace, then runs colcon build, and colcon test in it.

The workspace is built by running:

• vcs import on the repo file specified through the vcs-repo-file-url argument (defaults to https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros2/ros2/master/ros2.repos).
• checkout the code under test in the workspace using vcs
• rosdep install for the workspace, to get its dependencies
• run colcon build for all packages specified in package-name
• run colcon test for all packages specified in package-name

This action requires targeting a ROS or ROS 2 distribution explicitly. This is provided via the target-ros1-distro or target-ros2-distro inputs. Either or both may be specified, if neither is provided an error will be raised. This input is used to source setup.sh for any installed ROS binary installations, as well as used as an argument to rosdep install.

This action defines an output variable ros-workspace-directory-name. It contains the path to the root of the ROS workspace assembled by the action.

The variable value should be used to retrieve logs, binaries, etc. after the action completes.

See action.yml to get the list of flags supported by this action.

action-ros-ci-template offers a template for using action-ros-ci.

steps:
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
    with:
      package-name: ament_copyright
      target-ros2-distro: foxy

You can specify your own repos file using the vcs-repo-file-url input. You can also automatically generate your package's dependencies using the following workflow:

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v2
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
  # Run the generator and output the results to a file.
  - run: |
      rosinstall_generator <package-name> --rosdistro <target-distro> \
      --deps-only --deps --upstream-development > /tmp/deps.repos
  # Pass the file to the action
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
    with:
      package-name: my_package
      target-ros2-distro: foxy
      vcs-repo-file-url: /tmp/deps.repos

This tool supports building for both ROS and ROS 2 - to target ROS use target-ros1-distro

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v2
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
    with:
      required-ros-distributions: melodic
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
    with:
      package-name: my_package
      target-ros1-distro: melodic
      vcs-repo-file-url: ""

ASan is an open-source tool developed to automatically report memory corruption bugs.

steps:
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
    with:
      colcon-mixin-name: asan
      colcon-mixin-repository: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/colcon/colcon-mixin-repository/3e627e0fa30db85aea05a50e2c61a9832664d236/index.yaml
      package-name: my_package
      target-ros2-distro: foxy

To look for detected memory errors, check the build logs for entries containing ERROR: AddressSanitizer. Example:

==9442== ERROR: AddressSanitizer heap-use-after-free on address 0x7f7ddab8c084 at pc 0x403c8c bp 0x7fff87fb82d0 sp 0x7fff87fb82c8

ASan is analyzing memory issues at runtime. ASan diagnostic messages will be emitted by the package tests when they run.

If the compiler is invoked with the appropriate flags, action-ros-ci will use colcon-lcov-result to generate coverage information.

Flags can be passed manually using, for instance, extra-cmake-args, but it is preferable to use a colcon mixin to pass the appropriate flags automatically.

steps:
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
    with:
      package-name: my_package
      target-ros2-distro: foxy
      colcon-mixin-name: coverage-gcc
      # If possible, pin the repository in the workflow to a specific commit to avoid
      # changes in colcon-mixin-repository from breaking your tests.
      colcon-mixin-repository: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/colcon/colcon-mixin-repository/5c45b95018788deff62202aaa831ad4c20ebe2c6/index.yaml

If colcon is invoked with the coverage-pytest mixin, action-ros-ci will use colcon-coveragepy-result to generate coverage information.

Flags can be passed manually using, for instance, extra-cmake-args, but it is preferable to use a colcon mixin to pass the appropriate flags automatically.

steps:
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
    with:
      package-name: my_package
      target-ros2-distro: foxy
      colcon-mixin-name: coverage-pytest
      # If possible, pin the repository in the workflow to a specific commit to avoid
      # changes in colcon-mixin-repository from breaking your tests.
      colcon-mixin-repository: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/colcon/colcon-mixin-repository/5c45b95018788deff62202aaa831ad4c20ebe2c6/index.yaml

The generated code coverage information can be uploaded to codecov.io. In this case, you will need to setup a secret CODECOV_TOKEN in your repository settings.

See action/codecov-action documentation for more information about how to setup the action.

steps:
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
  - uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
    with:
      package-name: my_package
      target-ros2-distro: foxy
      colcon-mixin-name: coverage-gcc
      # If possible, pin the repository in the workflow to a specific commit to avoid
      # changes in colcon-mixin-repository from breaking your tests.
      colcon-mixin-repository: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/colcon/colcon-mixin-repository/5c45b95018788deff62202aaa831ad4c20ebe2c6/index.yaml
  - uses: codecov/[email protected]
    with:
      token: ${{ secrets.CODECOV_TOKEN }}
      file: ros_ws/lcov/total_coverage.info
      flags: unittests
      name: codecov-umbrella

You will also need to add a codecov.yaml configuration file (at the root of your repo):

fixes:
  - "ros_ws/src/my_package/::"

The configuration file is required to let codecov map the workspace directory structure, to the Git repository structure, and setup the links between codecov and GitHub properly.

GitHub workflows can persist data generated in workers during the build using artifacts. action-ros-ci generated colcon logs can be saved as follows:

- uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
  id: action_ros_ci_step
  with:
    package-name: ament_copyright
    target-ros2-distro: foxy
- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v1
  with:
    name: colcon-logs
    path: ${{ steps.action_ros_ci_step.outputs.ros-workspace-directory-name }}/log
- if: always() # upload the logs even when the build fails

If using action-ros-ci with a private repo, it needs a personal access token to be able to checkout the code. Generate a personal access token with the "repo" scope and add it to your repo's secrets. For example, if your secret is called REPO_TOKEN:

- uses: ros-tooling/[email protected]
  with:
    package-name: my_package
    import-token: ${{ secrets.REPO_TOKEN }}

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the Apache 2 license.