Convert ROS packages to Debian packages.

Required The ROS distribution codename to compile for.

Required The Debian/Ubuntu distribution codename to compile for.

The architecture (amd64, arm64, ...) to compile for.

Repos file with list of repositories to package. Defaults to sources.repos.

Additional sbuild.conf lines. For example EXTRA_REPOSITORIES, or VERBOSE. See man sbuild.conf.

Additional rosdep sources.

Don't add packages.ros.org as an apt repository. This allows to build against snapshots.ros.org, for example.

Whitespace separated list of ROS package names not to be build. Note that you need to list downstream dependencies of skipped packages in addition.

Do not check out the repository. This allows you to manually construct a repos file or workspace.

Set to ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} to deploy to a $DEB_DISTRO-$ROS_DISTRO-$DEB_ARCH branch in the same repo.

If set to true, all previous commits on the target branch will be discarded. For example, if you are deploying a static site with lots of binary artifacts, this can help prevent the repository from becoming overly bloated

If set, this branch will be used to push the packages instead of $DEB_DISTRO-$ROS_DISTRO-$DEB_ARCH.

If set to true, Git Large File Storage will be used to store the generated binaries.

name: builder

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:

jobs:
  build_testing:
    runs-on: ubuntu-24.04
    steps:
      - uses: jspricke/ros-deb-builder-action@main
        with:
          ROS_DISTRO: rolling
          DEB_DISTRO: jammy
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

You can run this action locally on Ubuntu 22.04 or Debian bookworm and newer system.

Run ./prepare -d <deb_distro> -a <arch> once to set up the system and/or adapt to your needs. It will create a ~/.cache/ccache with sufficient rights for the sbuild process, a ~/.sbuildrc, a ~/.cache/sbuild and optionally a ./src with the checked out repos.

Run ./build -r <ros_distro> -d <deb_distro> -a <arch> in a ROS workspace (or the current directory with ./src) to generate the packages into the apt_repo folder. You can run ./build -c to skip already built packages.

Run ./repository -r <ros_distro> -d <deb_distro> -a <arch> to create an apt repository. You can directly use it on your local machine by adapting the path from the generated README.md.

remote: Permission to <REPO_NAME> denied to github-actions[bot].
fatal: unable to access '<REPO_URL>': The requested URL returned error: 403

Make sure the GITHUB_TOKEN has permission to write to the git repository. In the Github webinterface of the project got to Settings, Actions, General. At the bottom there is "Workflow permissions", make sure "Read and write permissions" is selected.

Github has a hard limit of 100MB per file, so the Action deletes bigger files before pushing. You could omit the GITHUB_TOKEN and add your own deploy method as a final step.

sbuild denies network access during the build by default as per Debian policy 4.9. To allow network access use in the action:

SBUILD_CONF: "$enable_network = 1;"

Create a Github personal access token with repo scope and do:

echo -e "machine raw.githubusercontent.com\nlogin <TOKEN>" | sudo tee /etc/apt/auth.conf.d/github.conf