How to do it…

Good! We should be ready to install ROS. After this, the process of installation is pretty similar to the desktop installation discussed in the previous section. The major difference when installing ROS on the Ubuntu ARM platform is that it will not be possible to go for the full desktop installation. We install the selected package that is required for our application. Nevertheless, it will be nice to work with source building and installation for a package not present in the ROS repository:

• ROS Kinectic <ros_version> is compatible with Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus

• ROS Melodic <ros_versions> is compatible with Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver

Configuring repositories

The first step consists of configuring our Ubuntu repositories to allow "restricted," "universe," and "multiverse":

$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

We have something like this for Ubuntu 16.04:

deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ xenial main restricted universe multiverse 
#deb-src http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ xenial main restricted universe multiverse deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ xenial-updates main restricted universe multiverse 
#deb-src http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ xenial-updates main restricted universe multiverse 
#Kernel source (repos.rcn-ee.com) : https://github.com/RobertCNelson/linux-stable-rcn-ee 
#
#git clone https://github.com/RobertCNelson/linux-stable-rcn-ee
#cd ./linux-stable-rcn-ee #git checkout `uname -r` -b tmp 
# deb [arch=armhf] http://repos.rcn-ee.com/ubuntu/ xenial main 
#deb-src [arch=armhf] http://repos.rcn-ee.com/ubuntu/ xenial main

Similarly, the following is for Ubuntu 18.04:

deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ bionic main restricted universe multiverse 
#deb-src http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ bionic main restricted universe multiverse deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ bionic-updates main restricted universe multiverse 
#deb-src http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ bionic-updates main restricted universe multiverse 
#Kernel source (repos.rcn-ee.com) : https://github.com/RobertCNelson/linux-stable-rcn-ee 
# 
#git clone https://github.com/RobertCNelson/linux-stable-rcn-ee 
#cd ./linux-stable-rcn-ee 
#git checkout `uname -r` -b tmp 
# deb [arch=armhf] http://repos.rcn-ee.com/ubuntu/ bionic main 
#deb-src [arch=armhf] http://repos.rcn-ee.com/ubuntu/ bionic main

Then, use the following to update the sources:

$ sudo apt-get update