ros2 / ros2/ros2cli

Feature Request: Provide CLI to retrieve IP address a node runs on

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Python
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Description

I recently was in the situation, that two nodes were publishing on the same topic (classroom environment with several turtlebots, two of which with colliding ROS_DOMAIN_ID), and it would have been helpful if there was a command to find the IP address of each node in the system (some kind of a network inventory). We ended up to go after the tcpdump approach explained here to identify the offending host.

I thought having a ROS 2 native CLI tool would be nice to have, i.e., a tool that would incorporate the relevant abstractions / query info from the daemon.
I’d like to feature request a tool to provide this info, e.g., via ros2 node info --verbose command.
Maybe a similar query for info belonging to a GID for a topic would be useful too, in case node names collide).

I already skimmed through this repo but I didn’t find any obvious angle of approach to add this myself.
Any suggestions welcome.

Previous discussion:

In the linked discussion, the ROS 2 Monitor GUI tool was mentioned that seems to provide a graphical interface for inspection of the running nodes (not sure how vendor-specific this is though):

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Research direction

Start with the ros2 node info --verbose entry point and review how the daemon could expose node network information. The linked ROS 2 Monitor discussion and tcpdump example provide context, but the exact vendor-independent query and command behavior still need definition. Done would require an agreed CLI that identifies each node's IP address, with any topic GID query scope clarified.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
cli, networking
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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