Hi Bjoern,

That error message is a little misleading.  It should read, "No 'ros' 
stack defined" instead of no ROS_ROOT.  It's been fixed but in the mean 
time, rosinstall does not read from your environment.  You need to have  
a target which defines where ros is installed. I've created a 
troubleshooting page to cover it here 
http://www.ros.org/wiki/rosinstall/Troubleshooting#Error:_No_.27ros.27_stack_defined

In your case where did you create the .rosinstall file which has the 
'ros' stack defined?  I'm going to call that directory 
PATH_TO_PREVIOUS_ROSINSTALL, which I"m guessing in your case is 
/home/bjoern/ROS .  When you want to add urdf_tools to that rosinstall 
file you can use:

rosinstall PATH_TO_PREVIOUS_ROSINSTALL_DIR urdf_tools.rosinstall

assuming there's a .rosinstall file in PATH_TO_PREVIOUS_ROSINSTALL_DIR

Tully

On 12/27/2010 05:49 AM, Björn Giesler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to work through the URDF examples in the Wiki. This requires installing the urdf_tools stack, which I haven't found in any of the ...rosinstall files under http://www.ros.org/rosinstalls/, so I wrote my own install file, looking like this:
>
> [bjoern@toennchen ROS]$ cat urdf_tools.rosinstall
> - svn:
>      local-name: urdf_tools
>      uri: https://wu-ros-pkg.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wu-ros-pkg/stacks/urdf_tools/trunk
>
> When I try to install this, it fetches the package from SVN, only to give me this error:
>
> ERROR: No ROS_ROOT defined.  The 'ros' stack is required in all rosinstall directories. [...]
>
> ...but ROS_ROOT is defined:
>
> [bjoern@toennchen ROS]$ echo $ROS_ROOT
> /home/bjoern/ROS/ros
>
> Since it can't find ROS_ROOT, it doesn't add the package in $ROS_ROOT/.rosinstall. This is probably the reason why roslaunch can't find it so I can't run any of the examples. Can anyone help me?
>
> Damn, ROS is complicated...
>
> Thanks in advance&  Regards,
> Björn