drake_cmake_installed

CMake Project with an Installed Drake

This uses the CMake find_package(drake) mechanism to find an installed instance of Drake.

Instructions

Download and Install Prerequisites

First, run the install_prereqs script to download the Drake source to $HOME/drake/. This also run's Drake's setup script to install the required packages depending on your operating system:

setup/install_prereqs

See below for alternative versions of Drake to download.

Build Everything

Then run the following to build using CMake from the current directory (drake-external-examples/drake_cmake_installed):

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$HOME/drake ..
make

You can also optionally run the tests by calling make test.

Alternative Versions

By default, install_prereqs script gets the latest version of Drake (usually last night's build). Ignore this if that version is desired. Otherwise, the following are alternative options for which version of Drake to download.

To use any of these options, instead of running install_prereqs, run the code for whichever option you prefer below. Each option downloads Drake to the $HOME directory.

1. A specific version (date-stamped)

Replace jammy (for Ubuntu 22.04) with noble or mac-arm64 to download the version needed for your operating system.

curl -O https://drake-packages.csail.mit.edu/drake/nightly/drake-0.0.20250131-jammy.tar.gz
tar -xvzf drake-0.0.20250131-jammy.tar.gz -C $HOME
$HOME/drake/share/drake/setup/install_prereqs

See Installation via Direct Download for more information.

2. Manual installation

git clone https://github.com/RobotLocomotion/drake.git
cd drake
setup/install_prereqs
(mkdir build && cd build && cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/drake .. && make)

3. Manual installation w/ licensed Gurobi Install & setup gurobi (http://drake.mit.edu/bazel.html?highlight=gurobi#install-on-ubuntu)

git clone https://github.com/RobotLocomotion/drake.git
cd drake
setup/install_prereqs
(mkdir build && cd build && cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/drake -DWITH_GUROBI=ON .. && make)

Finally, for the code in this example, ensure you have python3-all-dev installed if on Ubuntu.

Examples

Drake-specific examples:

• Simple Continuous Time System
• Particle System
• Find Resources

Developer Testing

If you are a Drake Developer making build or API changes that may affect the downstream interface, please test this locally on your system.

These build instructions are adapted from those above, but will use an existing source tree of Drake (but not installing it to $HOME/drake), build this project, and then run all available tests:

# Build development version of Drake, ensuring no old artifacts are present.
cd drake  # Where you are developing.
rm -rf build && mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. # Configure Gurobi, Mosek, etc, if needed.
# Build locally.
make
# Record the build's install directory.
drake_install=${PWD}/install

# Build this project using a development version of Drake.
cd ..
# Clone this repository if you have not already.
git clone https://github.com/RobotLocomotion/drake-external-examples.git
cd drake-external-examples/drake_cmake_installed
# Follow "Install Prerequisites" in the instructions linked above if you
# have not already.
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=${drake_install} ..
make
ctest