Non-ROS Threads

The thread configurator can also manage scheduling for threads that are not part of any ROS 2 executor — for example, sensor driver threads or custom worker threads.

Usage

Use agnocast_cie_thread_configurator::spawn_non_ros2_thread instead of std::thread to create the thread. This function automatically reports the thread's ID to the configurator so that scheduling parameters can be applied.

#include "agnocast_cie_thread_configurator/cie_thread_configurator.hpp"

// Instead of:
//   std::thread t(my_worker_function, arg1, arg2);

// Use:
std::thread t = agnocast_cie_thread_configurator::spawn_non_ros2_thread(
  "my_worker",        // unique thread name (must match YAML config)
  my_worker_function,
  arg1, arg2);

The thread_name must be unique among all threads managed by the configurator, and must match the name field in the YAML configuration.

CMake

Add agnocast_cie_thread_configurator as a dependency:

find_package(agnocast_cie_thread_configurator REQUIRED)
ament_target_dependencies(your_target agnocast_cie_thread_configurator)

YAML Configuration

Configure non-ROS threads under the non_ros_threads section:

non_ros_threads:
  - name: my_worker
    policy: SCHED_FIFO
    priority: 85
    affinity: [3]

The fields are the same as callback_groups except name is used instead of id. All scheduling policies including SCHED_DEADLINE are supported. See the YAML Specification for details.

Prerun Mode

Non-ROS threads are also discovered by the prerun mode and included in the generated template.yaml.