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Enable & Disable

DendROS can be switched off and on at any time, including while a launch is running, without rebuilding or restarting anything.

dendros disable   # plain ros2 output everywhere
dendros enable    # colorized output again

System-wide: dendros disable / dendros enable

dendros disable turns DendROS off for every terminal:

  • New ros2 commands in any terminal run without DendROS.
  • ros2 launch and ros2 run commands that are already running, in any terminal, switch to plain output within about a second. The launch itself is not restarted.
  • A TUI launch closes its full-screen view and continues as plain output.

dendros enable reverses it. Running launches pick it up within about a second, and a TUI launch reopens with its full scrollback, including the lines printed while DendROS was disabled.

The running launch drops to plain ros2 output, then colorizes again.

dendros disable / enable

Disabling and re-enabling a running classic launch from another terminal

The full-screen viewer closes and the launch continues as plain output. On enable it reopens with the whole scrollback.

dendros disable / enable

The TUI closing on disable and reopening on enable

The setting persists until you run dendros enable, including across reboots.

One shell or one command: DENDROS_DISABLE

To bypass DendROS only in the current shell, or for a single command, use the environment variable instead:

DENDROS_DISABLE=1 ros2 launch my_bringup main.launch.py   # this command only
export DENDROS_DISABLE=1                                  # this shell

With DENDROS_DISABLE=1 the real ros2 binary is called directly, without any DendROS processing.

Note

dendros disable also sets DENDROS_DISABLE=1 in the shell where you ran it, and dendros enable unsets it there.

Debug output: DENDROS_DEBUG

DENDROS_DEBUG=1 ros2 launch my_bringup main.launch.py
DENDROS_DEBUG=1 ros2 launch dendros_demo interconnected.launch.py

DENDROS_DEBUG output for a package with a config

Prints which config files were found, the groups they define and the resulting node-to-color map to stderr at startup. In TUI mode the summary is printed before the viewer opens, so it is back on screen once you quit the viewer; add | cat to the command to get classic output and see it right away. Useful when colors don't show up, see Troubleshooting. Set Debug mode in dendros config to turn it on permanently.

Notes

  • Packages without a dendROS.yaml are never modified, whether DendROS is enabled or not.
  • Exit codes are preserved in every mode.