I take some minutes to find a solution for the problem :
Add a new file association for .launch files
- General -> Editors -> File Association ... add a new file type with the suffix *.launch assign the XML Editor to the new file type
- General -> Appearance -> Content Types ... roll off entry for TEXT in the menu go to XML and add *.launch
Now a .launch file will be opened by the XML Editor, if you have installed it.
In a second step you have to define a new external tool launch.
- Run -> External Tools -> External Tools Configurations
- choose PROGRAM and add a new lauch configuration by clicking the left button
- write a name like “Launch_ROS” to NAME
- integrate the path of roslaunch into LOCATION (usually something like ../ros/ros_comm/tools/roslaunch/bin/roslaunch)
- add as ARGUMENTS your ROS package name and .launch file name (for a more general use you can take ${project_name} ${resource_name}, but in this case your focus has to be on your launch file while starting !!!)
- then you can start the ROS application by Run -> External Tools -> Launch ROS
Anyone feels free to improve the chain !
Best wishes from Germany
Poseidonius
Originally posted by Poseidonius with karma: 427 on 2011-05-25
This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site
Post score: 9
Original comments
Comment by Asomerville on 2011-05-26:
Nice. I'm sure this well be helpful to many people.
Comment by chcorbato on 2012-09-18:
I'm trying to run roslaunch or roscore as an External Tool following this guide, but I get an error.
Looks like you probably need to define for eclipse the ROS environment variables, I think I've done so, but then I get this error when running:
/usr/bin/env: python: No such file or directory
Comment by Poseidonius on 2012-09-18:
Eclipse looks for a python interpreter in /usr/bin/env/ ... please check this outside Eclipse. Probably you add a wrong path.
Comment by chcorbato on 2012-09-20:
Outside Eclipse everything works. Could it be that Eclipse overwrites the path to the python interpreter? Maybe because of a default configuration for the PyDev plugin? Do you know which is the variable in Eclipse that defines the path?
Comment by Poseidonius on 2012-09-21:
Take a view on Window > Preferences > PyDev > Interpreter Python ... You can use "Auto Config" or declare the path manually.
Comment by harsha on 2012-10-17:
Thank you, @Poseidonius! This is really helpful.
Comment by aknirala on 2013-03-02:
Thanks @Poseidonius, I am able to run my launch file in eclipse. I was wondering is there a way I can debug it as well. That will be debugging in eclipse while running an external tool.
Comment by chrisLB on 2014-12-14:
I figured out a way of debugging nodes started with a launch config, see my blog post http://www.ceh-photo.de/blog/?p=899
Comment by DanielEckert on 2015-04-17:
Just had the following error, but found a solution:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/ros/indigo/bin/roslaunch", line 34, in
import roslaunch
ImportError: No module named roslaunch
Solution: Eclipse has to be launched from command line to have all environment variables.
Comment by Clack on 2016-01-25:
I'm new with eclipse and was really confused about what should I type in "Working Directory" and "Arguments". Can anyone give me some hints?
Comment by Abdul Mannan on 2016-11-14:
Thank you for excellent discussion. I have followed tutorial but I am facing a problem. I am getting error as follows
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/ros/kinetic/bin/roslaunch", line 34, in <module> import roslaunch
ImportError: No module named roslaunch
help plz
Comment by Nimrods on 2017-09-19:
I followed the instructions above and got the following error:
31m[demo_backpack_2d.launch] is neither a launch file in package [cartographer_ros] nor is [cartographer_ros] a launch file name[0m
from the shell it launches fine.
what am i missing?
Comment by TheMilkman on 2018-07-09:
I got the same error @Nimrods. Did you find a solution?