Intra-Process Communication between Components in Container

asked 2022-01-18 09:10:50 -0500

morten
198 ●18 ●32 ●34

Is it possible to take advantage of Intra Process Comms (IPC) when starting nodes in a container? I've made an example, trying to made a basic subscriber and publisher and looking at the pointer address, it seems as though it only works when "manually" composing.

This just seems surprising given the text in the composable nodes tutorial, which seems to indicate manually composing should somehow be "equivalent" to the container route. Especially given that manually composing using a multi-threaded executor also works fine.

Find the demo project here. The following example outputs are directly taken from this.

Example Outputs

Expected

With multi-threaded executor

$ ros2 run ipc_demo manual_composition 
[INFO] [1642518288.545003595] [ipc_talker]: Count: 0    Addr: 0x7f1dbc001300
[INFO] [1642518288.545393895] [ipc_listener]: Count: 0  Addr: 0x7f1dbc001300
[INFO] [1642518289.544906771] [ipc_talker]: Count: 1    Addr: 0x7f1dbc001400
[INFO] [1642518289.544989777] [ipc_listener]: Count: 1  Addr: 0x7f1dbc001400
[INFO] [1642518290.545010214] [ipc_talker]: Count: 2    Addr: 0x7f1dbc0032c0
[INFO] [1642518290.545243590] [ipc_listener]: Count: 2  Addr: 0x7f1dbc0032c0
[INFO] [1642518291.545039618] [ipc_talker]: Count: 3    Addr: 0x7f1dbc003f80
[INFO] [1642518291.545282153] [ipc_listener]: Count: 3  Addr: 0x7f1dbc003f80
[INFO] [1642518292.544973975] [ipc_talker]: Count: 4    Addr: 0x7f1db0001740
[INFO] [1642518292.545166314] [ipc_listener]: Count: 4  Addr: 0x7f1db0001740

Pointer addresses are the same, so should be working as expected.

Container

$ ros2 launch ipc_demo composition.launch.py 
[INFO] [launch]: All log files can be found below /home/morten/.ros/log/2022-01-18-16-04-58-690321-agrirobot-44101
[INFO] [launch]: Default logging verbosity is set to INFO
[INFO] [component_container-1]: process started with pid [44117]
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518299.060037442] [two_nodes]: Load Library: /home/morten/temp_ws/install/ipc_demo/lib/libtalker_component.so
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518299.061590715] [two_nodes]: Found class: rclcpp_components::NodeFactoryTemplate<composition::Talker>
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518299.061656586] [two_nodes]: Instantiate class: rclcpp_components::NodeFactoryTemplate<composition::Talker>
[INFO] [launch_ros.actions.load_composable_nodes]: Loaded node '/talker' in container '/two_nodes'
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518299.068096064] [two_nodes]: Load Library: /home/morten/temp_ws/install/ipc_demo/lib/liblistener_component.so
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518299.068447676] [two_nodes]: Found class: rclcpp_components::NodeFactoryTemplate<composition::Listener>
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518299.068460910] [two_nodes]: Instantiate class: rclcpp_components::NodeFactoryTemplate<composition::Listener>
[INFO] [launch_ros.actions.load_composable_nodes]: Loaded node '/listener' in container '/two_nodes'
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518300.067406025] [talker]: Count: 0    Addr: 0x557f63f68960
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518300.067869433] [listener]: Count: 0  Addr: 0x557f63e42fd0
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518301.067393044] [talker]: Count: 1    Addr: 0x557f63e04720
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518301.067703912] [listener]: Count: 1  Addr: 0x557f64035980
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518302.067380956] [talker]: Count: 2    Addr: 0x557f64053c20
[component_container-1] [INFO] [1642518302.067666810] [listener]: Count: 2  Addr: 0x557f63e42fd0

Different pointer addresses between corresponding talker/listener message.

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answered 2022-02-22 07:36:04 -0500

morten
198 ●18 ●32 ●34

updated 2022-02-22 07:36:18 -0500

Way down the road found a way to make it work, no one's responded so I'll post my own answer. See here, an example launch file which accomplishes my desired goal.

import launch
from launch_ros.actions import ComposableNodeContainer
from launch_ros.descriptions import ComposableNode


def generate_launch_description():
    container = ComposableNodeContainer(
        name="two_nodes",
        namespace="",
        package="rclcpp_components",
        executable="component_container",
        composable_node_descriptions=[
            ComposableNode(
                package="ipc_demo",
                plugin="composition::Talker",
                name="talker",
                extra_arguments=[{"use_intra_process_comms": True}],
            ),
            ComposableNode(
                package="ipc_demo",
                plugin="composition::Listener",
                name="listener",
                extra_arguments=[{"use_intra_process_comms": True}],
            ),
        ],
        output="screen",
    )

    return launch.LaunchDescription([container])

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Comments

Is ipc_demo your personal package? I'm wondering how you handled any modifications to CPP source (possibly from composition demos) to adapt it to intra process?

jeremya ( 2022-04-05 10:11:32 -0500 )edit

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