How to Roslaunch Nodes in Valgrind or GDB

Description: When debugging roscpp nodes that you are launching with roslaunch, you may wish to launch the node in a debugging program like gdb or valgrind instead. Doing this is very simple.

Keywords: roslaunch, valgrind, gdb, pdb

Tutorial Level: INTERMEDIATE

Next Tutorial: Profiling roslaunch nodes
 

The launch-prefix attribute of the <node> tag that, among other things, makes it easy to debug a ROS node process. Here are some example launch-prefixes you might find useful:

• launch-prefix="xterm -e gdb --args" : run your node in a gdb in a separate xterm window, manually type run to start it

• launch-prefix="gdb -ex run --args" : run your node in gdb in the same xterm as your launch without having to type run to start it

• launch-prefix="stterm -g 200x60 -e gdb -ex run --args" : run your node in gdb in a new stterm window without having to type run to start it

• launch-prefix="valgrind" : run your node in valgrind

• launch-prefix="xterm -e" : run your node in a separate xterm window

• launch-prefix="nice" : nice your process to lower its CPU usage

• launch-prefix="screen -d -m gdb --args" : useful if the node is being run on another machine; you can then ssh to that machine and do screen -D -R to see the gdb session

• launch-prefix="xterm -e python -m pdb" : run your python node a separate xterm window in pdb for debugging; manually type run to start it

• launch-prefix="yappi -b -f pstat -o <filename>": run your rospy node in a multi-thread profiler such as yappi.

• launch-prefix="/path/to/run_tmux": run your node in a new tmux window; you'll need to create /path/to/run_tmux with the contents: