Guidelines for asking a question on answers.ros.org

Do Not

• The following are not appropriate questions:

  • general debugging/programming questions not specific to ROS
  • questions about software that is not ROS related
  • your homework
• Don't contact the developers/maintainers directly.
  • The community can't see question or answer(s) not asked/answered publicly.
  • Open Source development works best when the entire community participates in discussions and helps to answer questions.

  • Send all questions to ROS Answers or the appropriate mailing list, and report all issues to the issue tracker.

• On ROS Answers, do not use answers for discussion, subsequent questions or just updates. Instead, edit your original post or use the comment functionality.

Do

• Be as specific as possible, with steps to reproduce.

  • Describe exactly what you were doing or are trying to do, and exactly what, if anything, went wrong. If you say, "rviz doesn't work," we can't help you.

    • If following a Tutorial or online instructions provide a link to the specific instructions.

    • Use a descriptive headline or subject line. Bad: "rviz doesn't work". Good: "Rviz crashing looking for missing .so after latest apt update"

  • Always provide the following information:

    • Names and versions of stacks/packages that you're using. "I'm using ROS C Turtle with pr2_simulator 1.1.1 and vocabulary_tree r30294"

    • Your platform (architecture, OS & version/distro). "I'm running OS X 10.5 on an iBook," or "I'm running Ubuntu Karmic on an x86, with kernel 2.6.31." For Linux, always provide the distro and kernel versions.

    • Any warnings or errors. Cut and paste them directly from the terminal window to which they were printed.

      • Please DO NOT re-type them yourself. Small typing mistakes can make a large difference and time wasted.

      • Please DO NOT post a screenshot of the terminal. Instead, cut/copy and paste whenever you can. Text in the screenshot images is not searchable (e.g. by any web browsers, by Google etc.)
  • When discussing any compiling/linking/installation issues, also provide:
    • gcc version
• As appropriate, also include your:

  • ROS environment variables (env | grep ROS)

  • Backtraces
  • Relevant config files
  • Graphics card model and driver version

  • Ogre.log for rviz, if possible (run with rviz -l)

  • Bag files and code samples that can reproduce the problem
  • Screenshots or movies to demonstrate the problem
• Always tag your questions appropriately. You must tag at least the rosdistro version.
• Format code snippets. To make your code snippets and error messages better readable, format them correctly (mark the code and press Ctrl-k).

If you have any questions please see: the FAQ

You are most likely to get a good answer if you provide a Short, Self Contained, Correct (Compilable) Example or a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example.