ROS 1 Command-Line Cheat Sheet

Before you start

This reference preserves useful commands from the original Academy4Tech ROS cheat sheet. It targets ROS 1. Some legacy tools beginning with rx were renamed to rqt tools; ROS 2 uses a different command structure.

Packages and workspaces

rospack find <package>
roscd <package>
rosls <package>
rosdep install <package>
catkin_make

Use rospack to locate packages, roscd to move into one and rosdep to install declared system dependencies.

Nodes and launch files

roscore
rosrun <package> <executable>
rosnode list
rosnode info <node>
rosnode ping <node>
rosnode kill <node>
roslaunch <package> <file.launch>

roscore starts the ROS master, parameter server and logging node. rosrun starts one executable; roslaunch coordinates one or more nodes from a launch file.

Topics and messages

rostopic list
rostopic type /topic_name
rostopic echo /topic_name
rostopic hz /topic_name
rostopic bw /topic_name
rosmsg show <message_type>

Publish a string at 10 Hz:

rostopic pub -r 10 /topic_name std_msgs/String "data: 'hello'"

Parameters

rosparam list
rosparam get /parameter
rosparam set /parameter value
rosparam dump parameters.yaml
rosparam load parameters.yaml
rosparam delete /parameter

Parameters use YAML values and live on the ROS parameter server.

Services

rosservice list
rosservice info /service_name
rosservice type /service_name
rosservice call /add_two_ints 1 2
rossrv show <service_type>

Record and replay topic data

rosbag record -a
rosbag record /topic_one /topic_two
rosbag info recording.bag
rosbag play recording.bag

Bag files capture time-stamped topic messages for repeatable debugging and analysis.

TF and visualization

rosrun tf tf_echo <source_frame> <target_frame>
rosrun tf view_frames
rqt_graph
rqt_plot /topic/field
rqt_console
rviz

Use these tools to inspect transforms, visualize the node graph, plot data, filter logs and view robot state.

Diagnose a workspace

roswtf
roswtf <launch-file>

roswtf checks the running graph or a launch file for common configuration problems.