ROS X Introspection

Unified successor of the following libraries:

• ros_type_introspection
• ros_msg_parser
• ros2_introspection

The library compiles either using:

• ROS1 (catkin),
• ROS2 (colcon/ament) or
• without any ROS dependency (vanilla cmake).

To parse any ROS message at runtime, it requires:

• The name of the type (for instance “sensors_msgs/JointState”)
• The definition of the type (for instance this one),
• The raw memory buffer to be deserialized into individual key/values pairs.

The raw memory buffer is usually obtained by:

• rosbag::MessageInstance and Topic::ShapeShifter in ROS1.
• GenericSubscriber or rosbag2_storage::SerializedBagMessage on ROS2.
• MCAP.

Python binding

Compilation instructions:

cmake -S. -B build_python -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DROSX_PYTHON_BINDINGS=ON
cmake --build build_python

If you have a rosbag (MCAP file) you can test it with this command

PYTHONPATH=build_python/python python3 python/mcap_ros_parser.py path_to_your_rosbag.mcap

Note that we are providing the folder where the dynamic library is using PYTHONPATH.

Changelog for package rosx_introspection

2.0.1 (2025-10-01)

• Merge pull request #21 from bryzhao/fix/scikit-build-core-compatibility Fix CMakeLists to support scikit-build-core installations
• Fix CMakeLists to support scikit-build-core installations
• Merge pull request #20 from nealtanner/bugfix/mac-compliation fix compilation errors on mac
• replace sprintf with snprintf
• inline vs constexpr
• Contributors: Bryan Zhao, Davide Faconti, Neal Tanner

2.0.0 (2025-09-24)

• optionally remove JSON support
• new formatting
• fix memory and add README
• add python binding
• NanoCDR
• Merge pull request #16 from traversaro/patch-1 Add missing include of functional header in message_definition_cache.cpp
• Fix issue #13
• Merge pull request #11 from valgur/bugfix/clang Fix ros_parser.cpp compilation failures on Clang
• Contributors: Davide Faconti, Martin Valgur, Silvio Traversaro

1.0.2 (2024-07-28)

• bug fix
• add unit tests
• Contributors: Davide Faconti

1.0.1 (2024-06-29)

• use CPM to download dependenies
• Merge pull request #9 from valgur/feature/cmake-improvements
• Contributors: Davide Faconti, Martin Valgur

1.0.0 (2024-06-26)

• New version including JSON conversion
• Contributors: Basavaraj-PN, Davide Faconti, ahmad-ra