Colcon Build from Any Directory and Need to Re-build for changes in Launch file

edit

Hey there!

I had the same problem and kept building in the wrong path, which was super annoying so I created a script with an alias. The alias is defined in project_dir/scripts/aliases.sh and builds a workspace in the directory project_dir/moveit2_ws.

parent_path="$(dirname $(dirname "$(realpath "$0")"))"

alias build-moveit2-ws='colcon \
                            --log-base $parent_path/moveit2_ws/log \
                        build \
                            --base-paths $parent_path/moveit2_ws/src \
                            --install-base $parent_path/moveit2_ws/install \
                            --build-base $parent_path/moveit2_ws/build \
                            --symlink-install \
                            --mixin rel-with-deb-info compile-commands ccache
                        source $parent_path/scripts/source-project.zsh'

Hope I this can help you! Johannes

For item 1, you can use provided command line arguments --build-base and --install-base specified here

colcon build --build-base <your-build-path> --install-base <your-install-path>

I expected a --log-base argument as well but it does not seem to exist; instead you can set the COLCON_LOG_PATH environment variable. Just add this to your .bashrc:

export COLCON_LOG_PATH=<your-log-path>

Pro tip:

Instead of always specifying the build and install base in your command you can set your configuration in ~/.colcon/defaults.yaml as specified here

Here is my configuration as reference:

{
    "build": {
        "symlink-install": true,
        "build-base": "/code/ros2_ws/build",
        "install-base": "/code/ros2_ws/install",
        "base-paths": ["/code/ros2_ws/src"]
    },
    "test": {
        "build-base": "/code/ros2_ws/build",
        "install-base": "/code/ros2_ws/install",
        "event-handlers": ["console_direct+"],
        "base-paths": ["/code/ros2_ws/src"],
    }
}