Robot Operating System – A flexible framework for writing robot software

Post by robotresearcher » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

carlsborg wrote: post #3

Anyone using this.. what have you built?

Post by xaedes » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

takluyver wrote: post #54

dimatura wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CMake is pretty established. You don't have to use CMake and if you don't want to, you don't have to use it - you can just compile your code however you like and manually put all your package files where ROS expects them to be, or use symlinks or some other hack. Doesn't seem to be worth it just to avoid CMake.

The build system is effectively almost required, though, because the documentation telling you how to do anything in ROS assumes you're using Catkin. I wouldn't know how to arrange files for ROS to use without going through the build system.

  [in any folder out of source]
  mkdir build
  cd build
  cmake [source folder]
  make
  source devel/setup.bash
  roslaunch your_fancy_package demonstrator_nodelet_or_whatever.launch

  project
  ├── cmake
  |   └── FindSomePackage.cmake
  ├── doc
  |   └── index.md
  ├── project_msgs
  |   ├── msg
  |   |   ├── Foo.msg
  |   |   └── Bar.msg
  |   ├── CMakeLists.txt
  |   └── package.xml
  ├── project_utils
  |   ├── include
  |   |   └── project_utils
  |   |       └── foo.h
  |   ├── launch
  |   |   └── ...
  |   ├── scripts
  |   |   └── do_stuff.py
  |   ├── src
  |   |   └── foo.cpp
  |   ├── CMakeLists.txt
  |   └── package.xml
  ├── components
  |   ├── heisenberg_compensator
  |   |   ├── include
  |   |   |   └── ...
  |   |   ├── src
  |   |   |   └── ...
  |   |   ├── CMakeLists.txt
  |   |   └── package.xml
  |   ├── warp_controller
  |   |   ├── include
  |   |   |   └── ...
  |   |   ├── src
  |   |   |   └── ...
  |   |   ├── CMakeLists.txt
  |   |   └── package.xml
  |   ├── ...
  |
  ├── .gitignore
  ├── readme.md
  └── CMakeLists.txt -> /opt/ros/[distribution e.g. kinetic]/share/catkin/cmake/toplevel.cmake
        should contain set(CMAKE_MODULE_PATH ${CMAKE_MODULE_PATH} ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake)

Post by jschwartzi » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

akoumis wrote: post #53

protomikron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The build system is mostly macros on top of cmake. That makes it even worse. So it's crap on top of crap. CMake is mostly used to build cross-platform software, but I don't think anybody uses ROS on a system other than Linux, so why not just use established tools like simple `make`?

Having written plenty of makefiles and cmakelists I would much rather write the latter for a CPP project. The idioms are easier to remember so I don’t have to search through SO to do little things. Let’s say I want to include a version of OpenCV of at least version 3.0, this is a super simple cmake command, make equivalent is probably not standardized and is some some strange syntax I will have to include in every ma…

Post by jvanderbot » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #64

protomikron wrote: post #12

My experience with ROS has been suboptimal. It's a collection of incompatible, outdated and buggy tools that communicate with each other via a single-point of failure (roscore) using a pub/sub mechanism. Furthermore they use their own build system (catkin, WHY?), define their own IDL (WHY?), use their own dependency system (rosdep, WHY?) and even mess with your Bash environment. I appreciate their effort and it is re…

Yes. But it's still useful. ROS is a packaging system for academic robotics software with a message passing layer. It was created by hammering a huge collection of existing software into talking a common protocol. The ROS people also made the distribution buildable as a whole (more or less; it's notorious for breaking due to version pinning problems.) Just having some kind of standard was a big win. It beats download…

Post by jvanderbot » Thu, Sep 06, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

asd4 wrote: post #28

protomikron wrote: post #12

My experience with ROS has been suboptimal. It's a collection of incompatible, outdated and buggy tools that communicate with each other via a single-point of failure (roscore) using a pub/sub mechanism. Furthermore they use their own build system (catkin, WHY?), define their own IDL (WHY?), use their own dependency system (rosdep, WHY?) and even mess with your Bash environment. I appreciate their effort and it is re…

> Furthermore they use their own build system (catkin, WHY?), define their own IDL (WHY?), use their own dependency system (rosdep, WHY?) and even mess with your Bash environment. I agree. When I ask these questions (we use ROS at our company) the answers usually sound like the following: 1. Catkin: No other solution for multi-project CMake. Apparently development often spans multiple projects / repositories for a si…