The first thing you will want to do before you write code is create an environnement for your project. This environnement is called Workspace. The Workspace is the root folder containing subfolders and files essential to run your project. These files will be generated using the catkin_init_workspace command.

Let's get into it!

• Choose a directory for your workspace, let's use 'catkin_ws'

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
catkin_init_workspace

This will create a CMakeLists.txt file in your /src folder.

• Then we will make the project

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make

This will create two subfolders, build and devel. The build folder is none of our interest in most of the part. The devel folder contains a number of files and directories, the most interesting of which are the setup files. Running these configures your system to use this workspace, and the code that’s (going to be) contained inside it.

• Configure your machine to use this Workspace

source devel/setup.bash

That's it, you've got your workspace up and running!