Hi all,

I am trying to construct the absolute minimum sized ros-gazebo container possible. Currently using ros:foxy-ros-base-focal, I apt-install gazebo 11 (600Mb) and ros-foxy-gazebo-ros-pkgs (1.3Gb). This in total adds around 2Gb to any base installation.

# Setup common base for simulator images
FROM ros:foxy-ros-base-focal

###
# Steps from gazebo:gzserver11 Dockerfile
###

RUN apt-get update \
    && apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y \
      lsb-release \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# setup keys
RUN apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys D2486D2DD83DB69272AFE98867170598AF249743

# setup sources.list
RUN . /etc/os-release \
    && echo "deb http://packages.osrfoundation.org/gazebo/$ID-stable `lsb_release -sc` main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gazebo-latest.list

# install gazebo packages
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
    gazebo11 \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# setup environment
# Expose default gzserver port
EXPOSE 11345

###
# End of gazebo:gzserver11 steps
###

# Add gazebo environemnt setup to /ros.env
RUN echo "source /usr/share/gazebo/setup.sh" >> /ros.env

RUN apt-get update \
    && apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y \
      ros-foxy-gazebo-ros-pkgs \
      && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

I have looked at installing both packages from source (http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=install_from_source&cat=install) (http://gazebosim.org/tutorials?tut=ros2_installing&cat=connect_ros), which provides a dependency install script. However I don't think this will help as (a) I will be installing both build and runtime dependncies, so it cannot be smaller than previously and (b) I could try and use a multi-stage build, but then I need to know where the gazebo/gazebo_ros binaries and libraries are, AND the runtime dependncies.

Also, there are probably a number of aspects of gazebo that I might not need (I am using it for simple ground and air vehicle sims) e.g. the variety of physics engines, probably other things. But I do not know how to configure such a build.

In addition, i'm trying to get this done asap so I don't have much time to look into build options and such.

Therefore! Aside from rebuilding a binary to my liking, I would like to know if the released apt-installed libraries have any extra or non-runtime libraries I may be able to delete. Also appreciate any further tips and tricks you might have!

Many Thanks!