Hi everyone,

Since we kicked off the OpenEmbedded Layer meta-ros project in January this year, we have made much progress and are now happy to announce our first release of the OpenEmbedded Layer meta-ros. You can download the first release from https://github.com/bmwcarit/meta-ros/releases, or
follow the installation instructions on the ros wiki at http://wiki.ros.org/hydro/Installation/OpenEmbedded.

The OpenEmbedded Layer meta-ros features
  - a general cross-compilation tool chain for catkin packages,
  - 78 ROS packages, including all ros-comm packages, actionlib, nodelet_core, common_msgs, tf and image_transport,
  - recipes for roscpp_tutorials and common_tutorials as examples for your own tool chain, and
  - all provided packages are Hydro release versions (as set in hydro/release.yaml [4]).

With the OpenEmbedded Layer meta-ros, you can
  - define the cross-compilation tool chain for your ROS packages with just a few lines, and
  - build an embedded Linux system with your ROS application by typing a one-line shell command.

Standing on the shoulders of giants, the OpenEmbedded Layer meta-ros can be incorporated with the tools, board support packages and infrastructure of the OpenEmbedded/Yocto environment. For example, the OpenEmbedded/Yocto environment provides
  - Board support packages for various architectures, boards, devices and emulators [5].
  - The Hob graphical user interface that enables you to build and deploy a custom OS image easily.
  - The Eclipse IDE Plug-in that integrates the application development and its toolchain into the Eclipse IDE.

The OpenEmbedded Layer meta-ros
  - was tested for architectures arm, ppc, x86, x86-64 and on the Beagleboard and on the Trimslice board, and
  - works with the OpenEmbedded-Core development branch, the Angstrom distribution and the Poky-dylan distribution with some minor patches. 

Please report problems and issues to our github issue tracker [1], and follow our mailing list [2] or star the github project [3].

Enjoy ROS on your favorite embedded device!


Lukas Bulwahn, BMW Car IT GmbH


References:

[1] https://github.com/bmwcarit/meta-ros/issues
[2] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/meta-ros
[3] https://github.com/bmwcarit/meta-ros
[4] https://raw.github.com/ros/rosdistro/770d0ac9ac549a255210c0aa83902e2dc0d0e4da/hydro/release.yaml
[5] http://layers.openembedded.org/layerindex/machines/