Logging

Obelisk uses the ROS2 logging system. Because of this, we highly encourage all users to also use the ROS2 logging system when writing their own nodes. Specifics on how this can be done can be found here. Obelisk also provides automatic logging directory creation and organization.

Whenever the launch file is used (i.e. obk-launch) a few steps occur:

Obelisk checks for a directory called obk_logs in $ROS_HOME. If $ROS_HOME is unset, then we use $OBELISK_ROOT. If the obk_logs directory is not present, then Obelisk will create this directory.
Obelisk will create a sub-folder in obk_logs for each run. The naming convention is <config name>_<YYYYMMDD>_<HHMMSS>. This is where all the log files will go (as a by-product, the $ROS_LOG_DIR environment variable is set to this folder).
If bag is set to true then Obelisk will automatically bag all of the topics and place them in a sub-folder called obk_stack_bag. Note that the bag option defaults to true, resulting in an opt-out system for bagging.

Given the above logic, the default location for obk_logs will be in $OBELISK_ROOT and if you prefer to have the logs in your workspace, you need to set $ROS_HOME. Due to this, it is suggested to add obk_logs/ to your .gitignore if you set $ROS_HOME.

Logs to the terminal and to this folder are generated every run.

The default log level used is INFO. If you would like to adjust the logging severity, you can do so in the source code for your node. For example in C++ to set to DEBUG:

auto ret = rcutils_logging_set_logger_level(
        get_logger().get_name(), RCUTILS_LOG_SEVERITY_DEBUG);
if (ret != RCUTILS_RET_OK) {
    RCLCPP_ERROR(get_logger(), "Error setting severity: %s", rcutils_get_error_string().str);
    rcutils_reset_error();
}

For the full example, see here.