One-Click ROS 2 Startup in Windows Terminal with Pixi

A guide to automating the startup and environment initialization for ROS 2 inside Pixi environments on Windows using a dedicated Windows Terminal profile.

The Problem

Running ROS 2 on Windows often requires navigating to your workspace, activating the Pixi environment (pixi shell), and sourcing the ROS 2 setup batch script (call local_setup.bat). Because pixi shell launches a nested interactive subshell, standard terminal chaining commands like cmd /k can drop out of scope or fail to retain ROS 2 environment variables.

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Solution

1. Create the Launch Script

Create a helper script inside your workspace (C:\pixi_ws\launch_ros2.bat):

@echo off

:: Sourcing the ROS 2 environment
cd /d C:\pixi_ws
call C:\pixi_ws\ros2-windows\local_setup.bat
cmd /k

2. Configure Windows Terminal

1. Open Windows Terminal and press Ctrl + , to open Settings.
2. Click Open JSON file at the bottom-left.
3. In the "profiles": { "list": [ ... ] } array, add:

{
  "guid": "{b2c4e567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcdef}",
  "name": "ROS 2 (Pixi)",
  "commandline": "cmd.exe /k \"cd /d C:\\pixi_ws && pixi run -- cmd /k C:\\pixi_ws\\launch_ros2.bat\"",
  "startingDirectory": "C:\\pixi_ws",
  "hidden": false
}

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Verification

Open your new tab from the Windows Terminal dropdown and verify:

ros2 --help
ros2 run demo_nodes_cpp talker