Installation using Isaac Sim Source Code

The following steps first installs Isaac Sim from source, then Isaac Lab from source code.

Installing Isaac Sim

Building from source

From Isaac Sim 5.0 release, it is possible to build Isaac Sim from its source code. This approach is meant for users who wish to modify the source code of Isaac Sim as well, or want to test Isaac Lab with the nightly version of Isaac Sim.

The following instructions are adapted from the Isaac Sim documentation for the convenience of users.

• Clone the Isaac Sim repository into your workspace:

git clone https://github.com/isaac-sim/IsaacSim.git

• Build Isaac Sim from source:

cd IsaacSim
./build.sh

Verifying the Isaac Sim installation

To avoid the overhead of finding and locating the Isaac Sim installation directory every time, we recommend exporting the following environment variables to your terminal for the remaining of the installation instructions:

# Isaac Sim root directory
export ISAACSIM_PATH="${pwd}/_build/linux-x86_64/release"
# Isaac Sim python executable
export ISAACSIM_PYTHON_EXE="${ISAACSIM_PATH}/python.sh"

Check that the simulator runs as expected:

# note: you can pass the argument "--help" to see all arguments possible.
${ISAACSIM_PATH}/isaac-sim.sh

Check that the simulator runs from a standalone python script:

# checks that python path is set correctly
${ISAACSIM_PYTHON_EXE} -c "print('Isaac Sim configuration is now complete.')"
# checks that Isaac Sim can be launched from python
${ISAACSIM_PYTHON_EXE} ${ISAACSIM_PATH}/standalone_examples/api/isaacsim.core.api/add_cubes.py

If the simulator does not run or crashes while following the above instructions, it means that something is incorrectly configured. To debug and troubleshoot, please check Isaac Sim documentation and the Isaac Sim Forums.

Installing Isaac Lab

Cloning Isaac Lab

Clone the Isaac Lab repository into your project’s workspace:

git clone git@github.com:isaac-sim/IsaacLab.git

We provide a helper executable isaaclab.sh and isaaclab.bat for Linux and Windows respectively that provides utilities to manage extensions.

./isaaclab.sh --help
usage: isaaclab.sh [-h] [-i] [-f] [-p] [-s] [-t] [-o] [-v] [-d] [-n] [-c] -- Utility to manage Isaac Lab.
optional arguments:
   -h, --help           Display the help content.
   -i, --install [LIB]  Install the extensions inside Isaac Lab and learning frameworks (rl_games, rsl_rl, sb3, skrl) as extra dependencies. Default is 'all'.
   -f, --format         Run pre-commit to format the code and check lints.
   -p, --python         Run the python executable provided by Isaac Sim or virtual environment (if active).
   -s, --sim            Run the simulator executable (isaac-sim.sh) provided by Isaac Sim.
   -t, --test           Run all python pytest tests.
   -o, --docker         Run the docker container helper script (docker/container.sh).
   -v, --vscode         Generate the VSCode settings file from template.
   -d, --docs           Build the documentation from source using sphinx.
   -n, --new            Create a new external project or internal task from template.
   -c, --conda [NAME]   Create the conda environment for Isaac Lab. Default name is 'env_isaaclab'.
   -u, --uv [NAME]      Create the uv environment for Isaac Lab. Default name is 'env_isaaclab'.

Creating the Isaac Sim Symbolic Link

Set up a symbolic link between the installed Isaac Sim root folder and _isaac_sim in the Isaac Lab directory. This makes it convenient to index the python modules and look for extensions shipped with Isaac Sim.

# enter the cloned repository
cd IsaacLab
# create a symbolic link
ln -s ${ISAACSIM_PATH} _isaac_sim
# For example:
# Option 1: If pre-built binaries were installed:
# ln -s ${HOME}/isaacsim _isaac_sim
#
# Option 2: If Isaac Sim was built from source:
# ln -s ${HOME}/IsaacSim/_build/linux-x86_64/release _isaac_sim

Setting up a Python Environment (optional)

Creating a dedicated Python environment for Isaac Lab is strongly recommended, even though it is optional. Using a virtual environment helps:

• Avoid conflicts with system Python or other projects installed on your machine.
• Keep dependencies isolated, so that package upgrades or experiments in other projects do not break Isaac Sim.
• Easily manage multiple environments for setups with different versions of dependencies.
• Simplify reproducibility — the environment contains only the packages needed for the current project, making it easier to share setups with colleagues or run on different machines.

You can choose different package managers to create a virtual environment.

• UV: A modern, fast, and secure package manager for Python.
• Conda: A cross-platform, language-agnostic package manager for Python.

Once created, you can use the default Python in the virtual environment (python or python3) instead of ./isaaclab.sh -p or isaaclab.bat -p.

# Option 1: Default environment name 'env_isaaclab'
./isaaclab.sh --uv  # or "./isaaclab.sh -u"
# Option 2: Custom name
./isaaclab.sh --uv my_env  # or "./isaaclab.sh -u my_env"

# Activate environment
source ./env_isaaclab/bin/activate  # or "source ./my_env/bin/activate"

Once you are in the virtual environment, you do not need to use ./isaaclab.sh -p or isaaclab.bat -p to run python scripts. You can use the default python executable in your environment by running python or python3. However, for the rest of the documentation, we will assume that you are using ./isaaclab.sh -p or isaaclab.bat -p to run python scripts.

Installation

• Install dependencies using apt (on Linux only):

# these dependency are needed by robomimic which is not available on Windows
sudo apt install cmake build-essential

• Run the install command that iterates over all the extensions in source directory and installs them using pip (with --editable flag):

./isaaclab.sh --install # or "./isaaclab.sh -i"

By default, the above will install all the learning frameworks. These include rl_games, rsl_rl, sb3, skrl, robomimic.

If you want to install only a specific framework, you can pass the name of the framework as an argument. For example, to install only the rl_games framework, you can run:

./isaaclab.sh --install rl_games  # or "./isaaclab.sh -i rl_games"

The valid options are all, rl_games, rsl_rl, sb3, skrl, robomimic, and none. If none is passed, then no learning frameworks will be installed.

Verifying the Isaac Lab installation

To verify that the installation was successful, run the following command from the top of the repository:

# Option 1: Using the isaaclab.sh executable
# note: this works for both the bundled python and the virtual environment
./isaaclab.sh -p scripts/tutorials/00_sim/create_empty.py
# Option 2: Using python in your virtual environment
python scripts/tutorials/00_sim/create_empty.py

The above command should launch the simulator and display a window with a black viewport. You can exit the script by pressing Ctrl+C on your terminal. On Windows machines, please terminate the process from Command Prompt using Ctrl+Break or Ctrl+fn+B.

If you see this, then the installation was successful! |🎉|

Train a robot!

You can now use Isaac Lab to train a robot through Reinforcement Learning! The quickest way to use Isaac Lab is through the predefined workflows using one of our Batteries-included robot tasks. Execute the following command to quickly train an ant to walk! We recommend adding --headless for faster training.

./isaaclab.sh -p scripts/reinforcement_learning/rsl_rl/train.py --task=Isaac-Ant-v0 --headless

… Or a robot dog!

./isaaclab.sh -p scripts/reinforcement_learning/rsl_rl/train.py --task=Isaac-Velocity-Rough-Anymal-C-v0 --headless

Isaac Lab provides the tools you’ll need to create your own Tasks and Workflows for whatever your project needs may be. Take a look at our How-to Guides guides like Adding your own learning Library or Wrapping Environments for details.