You're reading the documentation for an older, but still supported, version of ROS 2. For information on the latest version, please have a look at Galactic.

Working with eProsima Fast DDS

eProsima Fast DDS is a complete open-source DDS implementation for real time embedded architectures and operating systems. See also: https://www.eprosima.com/index.php/products-all/eprosima-fast-dds

Prerequisites

Have rosdep installed

Install packages

The easiest way is to install from ROS 2 apt repository.

sudo apt install ros-galactic-rmw-fastrtps-cpp

Build from source code

Building from source code is also another way to install.

First, clone Fast DDS and rmw_fastrtps in the ROS 2 workspace source directory.

cd ros2_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/ros2/rmw_fastrtps ros2/rmw_fastrtps
git clone https://github.com/eProsima/Fast-DDS eProsima/fastrtps

Then, install necessary packages for Fast DDS.

cd ..
rosdep install --from src -i

Finally, run colcon build.

colcon build --symlink-install

Switch to rmw_fastrtps

The eProsima Fast DDS RMW can be selected by specifying the environment variable:

export RMW_IMPLEMENTATION=rmw_fastrtps_cpp

See also: Working with multiple RMW implementations

Run the talker and listener

Now run talker and listener to test Fast DDS.

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker

ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp listener