Skip to content

Source installation#

Prerequisites#

For ROS 2 system dependencies, refer to REP-2000.

sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y install git

How to set up a development environment#

  1. Clone autowarefoundation/autoware and move to the folder:
git clone https://github.com/autowarefoundation/autoware.git
cd autoware
  1. If you are installing Autoware for the first time, you can automatically install the dependencies by using the provided Ansible script:
./setup-dev-env.sh

How to set up a workspace#

  1. Create a workspace directory and a src folder inside it:

cd autoware
mkdir src
Then, import the necessary packages using vcs: 
# Note: Make sure to run the following commands locally on your machine (not over remote SSH)
vcs import src < autoware.repos  

vcs import src < extra-packages.repos

  1. Install dependent ROS packages

Before building the workspace, make sure all required ROS dependencies are installed:

source /opt/ros/humble/setup.bash
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
rosdep update
rosdep install -y --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro $ROS_DISTRO
  1. Install and setup ccache to speed up consecutive builds (optional but recommended)

3.1 Install Ccache: 

sudo apt-get install ccache
3.2 Configure Ccache

Create the Ccache configuration folder and file: 

mkdir -p ~/.cache/ccache
touch ~/.cache/ccache/ccache.conf
Set the maximum cache size. By default, it's 5 GB, but you can increase it based on your system's available storage. In this example, we set it to 60 GB: 
echo "max_size = 60G" >> ~/.cache/ccache/ccache.conf
3.3 Integrate Ccache with your environment

To ensure that Ccache is used during compilation, add the following lines to your .bashrc. This setup redirects gcc and g++ calls through Ccache: 

export CC="/usr/lib/ccache/gcc"
export CXX="/usr/lib/ccache/g++"
export CCACHE_DIR="$HOME/.cache/ccache/"
After adding these lines, either reload your .bashrc or restart the terminal to apply the changes.

3.4 Verify Ccache is working 

ccache -s

How to build workspace#

  1. Create a new swapfile (optional but recommended)

Building Autoware is memory-intensive. If your system runs out of memory during the build, it may freeze or crash. To prevent this, it is recommended to configure 16–32 GB of swap space:

sudo swapoff /swapfile
sudo rm /swapfile
Allocating 32 GB of swap space improves build performance and helps prevent crashes due to memory exhaustion: 
sudo fallocate -l 32G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile

  1. Build the workspace:

Autoware uses colcon to build workspaces. For more advanced options, refer to the documentation. 

colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
Reference: 
   [debug]: "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug"
   [min-size-rel]: "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=MinSizeRel"
   [rel-with-deb-info]: "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo"
   [release]: "-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release"
By reducing the number of packages built in parallel, you can lower memory usage. In the example below, only one package is built at a time: 
colcon build --symlink-install --parallel-workers 1 --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Autoware Build GUI#

  1. Install dependencies:
sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 libjavascriptcoregtk-4.1-0 libsoup-3.0-0 libsoup-3.0-common

Before running the Autoware Build GUI, ensure that both Rust and Node.js are installed on your system:

  1. Install Rust:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs/ | sh
You can verify it using the following command: 
rustc --version
You will see something similar to: 
rustc 1.88.0 (6b00bc388 2025-06-23)

  1. Install Node.js(version > 14):

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.3/install.sh | bash
\. "$HOME/.nvm/nvm.sh"
nvm install 22
You can verify it using the following command: 
node --version
You will see something similar to: 
v22.17.0

  1. It is recommended to install pnpm:
npm install -g pnpm
  1. Install gtk-3.0:
sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-dev
sudo apt-get install javascriptcoregtk-4.1
sudo apt-get install libsoup-3.0
sudo apt-get install webkit2gtk-4.1
  1. Run the Build GUI from source:

Clone the repository: 

git clone https://github.com/leo-drive/autoware-build-gui.git
Navigate to the project directory: 
cd autoware-build-gui
Install the required packages: 
pnpm i
Run the Build GUI: 
pnpm tauri dev

Network Configuration#

Enable localhost-only communication 1. Enable multicast on lo

Manually (temporary solution):

sudo ip link set lo multicast on
This will be reverted once the computer restarts. To make it permanent, follow the steps below:

On startup with a service (permanent solution): 

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/multicast-lo.service
Paste the following into the file: 
[Unit]
Description=Enable Multicast on Loopback

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/ip link set lo multicast on

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Make it take effect: 
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable multicast-lo.service
sudo systemctl start multicast-lo.service
You can verify it using the following command: 
sudo systemctl status multicast-lo.service
You will see something similar to: 
○ multicast-lo.service - Enable Multicast on Loopback
  Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/multicast-lo.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
  Active: inactive (dead) since Thu 2025-07-31 06:41:35 EDT; 37min ago
 Process: 793 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/ip link set lo multicast on (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 793 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
     CPU: 2ms

Jul 31 06:41:35 afer360-Default-string systemd[1]: Starting Enable Multicast on Loopback...
Jul 31 06:41:35 afer360-Default-string systemd[1]: multicast-lo.service: Deactivated successfully.
Jul 31 06:41:35 afer360-Default-string systemd[1]: Finished Enable Multicast on Loopback.
To verify with another command: 
ip link show lo
You will see something similar to: 
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
 link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00

  1. Tune DDS settings

For CycloneDDS configuration:

Save the following file as ~/cyclonedds.xml: 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<CycloneDDS xmlns="https://cdds.io/config" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="https://cdds.io/config https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eclipse-cyclonedds/cyclonedds/master/etc/cyclonedds.xsd">
  <Domain Id="any">
    <General>
      <Interfaces>
        <NetworkInterface autodetermine="false" name="lo" priority="default" multicast="default" />
      </Interfaces>
      <AllowMulticast>default</AllowMulticast>
      <MaxMessageSize>65500B</MaxMessageSize>
    </General>
    <Internal>
      <SocketReceiveBufferSize min="10MB"/>
      <Watermarks>
        <WhcHigh>500kB</WhcHigh>
      </Watermarks>
    </Internal>
    <Discovery>
      <ParticipantIndex>auto</ParticipantIndex>
      <MaxAutoParticipantIndex>100</MaxAutoParticipantIndex>
    </Discovery>
  </Domain>
</CycloneDDS>
Then add the following lines to your ~/.bashrc file: 
export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_cyclonedds_cpp

export CYCLONEDDS_URI=file://absolute/path/to/cyclonedds.xml
# Replace `/absolute/path/to/cyclonedds.xml` with the actual path to the file.
# Example: export CYCLONEDDS_URI=file:///home/user/cyclonedds.xml