mcap-ros2idl-support 0.1.3

A Python library to read and parse ROS 2 MCAP bag files without a ROS 2 runtime.

mcap-ros2idl-support

A Python library to read and parse ROS 2 MCAP bag files without a ROS 2 runtime. It extracts schemas from rosbag2 messages and decodes their CDR payloads.

Features

• Read-only parsing of MCAP/rosbag2 files without needing a ROS 2 runtime
• Treats each struct as a Python dict instead of generating dynamic classes

Installation

Requires Python ≥3.10.

Install the Python package:

pip install .

Usage

Python example

from mcap.reader import make_reader
from mcap_ros2idl_support import Ros2DecodeFactory

factory = Ros2DecodeFactory()

with open("sample.mcap", "rb") as f:
    reader = make_reader(f, decoder_factories=[factory])
    for decoded in reader.iter_decoded_messages():
        print(decoded.channel.topic)
        print(decoded.decoded_message)

Command line

python examples/cli.py --mcap-file sample.mcap

Use the --enum-as-string flag to return enumeration values as strings:

python examples/cli.py --mcap-file sample.mcap --enum-as-string

Development

1. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   python -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate
   

2. Install project and development dependencies:

   pip install -e '.[dev]'
   

3. Install and run pre-commit:

   pre-commit install
   pre-commit run --files <file> [<file> ...]
   

   To check the entire repository, use:

   pre-commit run --all-files
   

4. Run tests with pytest:

   pytest
   

Building the wheel

1. Clean old artifacts:

   rm -rf dist
   

2. Install the build backend:

   python -m pip install --upgrade build
   

3. Build the wheel:

   python -m build
   

4. (Optional) Verify the wheel locally:

   python -m pip install dist/mcap_ros2idl_support-<version>-py3-none-any.whl
   

5. (Optional) Upload to PyPI:

   python -m pip install --upgrade twine
   python -m twine upload dist/*
   

Project structure

The repository is organized as follows:

• mcap_ros2idl_support/ – core Python package
  • cdr/ – helpers for reading and writing CDR streams
  • ros2idl_parser/ – parser for ros2idl schema definitions
  • rosmsg/ – parser for classic .msg message definitions
  • rosmsg2_serialization/ – utilities for decoding CDR payloads into dictionaries
  • decode_factory.py – integrates parsers and CDR readers with the MCAP decoder
• examples/ – example CLI demonstrating how to iterate decoded messages
• tests/ – unit tests for the library

Design notes

• Uses Foxglove’s @foxglove/ros2idl-parser to handle .idl files in addition to classic .msg definitions.
• MCAP file writing is not supported, though CDR encoding helpers are available for individual messages.
• Enumerations defined in IDL can be returned as their string values by enabling enum_as_string.
• The goal is to enable parsing MCAP bags without any ROS 2 dependencies to make offline analysis easier.