How to Build and Install ROS 2 Jazzy on an ARM Mac

A labor of...love?

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tagged: #ros

Here are my detailed instructions on how I got ROS 2 Jazzy Jalisco running on my M3 Mac without Rosetta.

For reference, here are some links that helped me get started:

§ A Note on Homebrew

If you migrated your Homebrew setup from an Intel Mac to an ARM Mac (as I did), you’re going to have some issues resulting from

  1. the architecture changing, and
  2. having some packages installed in /usr/local (the Intel Mac’s brew --prefix) and some installed in /opt/homebrew (the ARM Mac’s brew --prefix).

Stay tuned on how I solved these issues.

§ Directory Layout

I suggest making a root directory that you can then put your ros2_jazzy folder and your venv folder.

<root>
   ├── ros2_jazzy/     ROS workspace
   ├── venv/           Python virtual environment

I’m going to refer to the root directory as outer_dir from now on.

§ Python 3.11

Install Python 3.11 using

brew install [email protected]

§ Virtual environment

Use whatever virtual environment setup you’re comfortable with. You don’t need to use direnv. (I didn’t.) You don’t even have to put the venv folder in the root folder like I suggested above.

While I used virtualfish,

cd /path/to/outer_dir
python3.11 -m venv venv

works perfectly fine.

Make sure you

source venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip

before starting the next section.

§ Install prerequisites

Follow the ROS 2 Jazzy documentation section on install prerequisites. You do not need to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP).

Once you’re done,

pip uninstall empy
pip install empy==3.3.4

§ Clone ROS

You’ll want to create a workspace and clone all ROS repositories:

mkdir -p ~/ros2_jazzy/src
cd ~/ros2_jazzy
vcs import --input https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ros2/ros2/jazzy/ros2.repos src

§ Build ROS 

colcon build \
    --symlink-install \
    --merge-install \
    --event-handlers console_cohesion+ console_package_list+ \
    --packages-skip-by-dep python_qt_binding \
    --cmake-args \
        --no-warn-unused-cli \
        -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF \
        -DINSTALL_EXAMPLES=ON \
        -DCMAKE_OSX_SYSROOT=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk \
        -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="arm64" \
        -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$(brew --prefix):$(brew --prefix qt@5) \
        -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=$(which python3) \

§ An Incomplete List of Errors and Solutions

§ rviz_ogre_vendor fatal error: 'Availability.h' file not found

I solved this by

  1. reinstalling XCode, and
  2. reinstalling XCode Command Line Tools: 
    sudo rm -rf /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools
xcode-select --install

§ <insert package here> is giving you an undefined symbols for architecture error

Double check that you don’t have the offending package in /usr/local/Cellar. If you do have it, just

rm -rf /usr/local/Cellar/<offending package>

§ Can’t find Python errors

Deactivate and reactivate your virtual environment. (Have you tried turning it off, then on again?)

I hope this helps!

the end