Dear ROS community,
The webots_ros2 package is now compatible with Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to improve the experience of Windows users who use ROS2 with Webots. This feature is already available on Humble and Rolling and will step into Foxy and Galatic at the next sync.
What is it exactly?
Until now, the package was natively compatible with Windows. However, using ROS2 outside a Linux environment is not trivial and many ROS 2 packages are not well maintained on Windows.
We decided to remove the native compatibility with Windows, and replace it with the possibility to run the package in WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). This way, Webots is still run under Windows (to take advantage of 3D hardware acceleration), while the whole ROS2 part can be run in a Linux environment, which greatly increases the simplicity of maintaining and using the package and the possibility to use other ROS 2 packages. In short, the experience of Windows users is greatly improved and simplified.
How to use it?
The procedure to install the package in WSL and start the examples is available here: Complete Installation Guide · cyberbotics/webots_ros2 Wiki · GitHub.
The ROS 2 tutorial on setting up a robot simulation with Webots was also updated accordingly: Setting up a robot simulation (Webots) — ROS 2 Documentation: Humble documentation.
Want more details?
See the PR for more details: https://github.com/cyberbotics/webots_ros2/pull/481