Hi Pat,
You have an old version of rosinstall.  The latest version of rosinstall is
0.5.8 and is available through the pypi package system with easy_install.
The version you have is just a script.  The usage has changed a bit between
the two versions. See http://www.ros.org/wiki/rosinstall for how to get the
new version.

The error you are getting in the unstable tree is an svn error.  We made a
versioned copy of a file which used to be autogenerated.  svn will not
updated with that file in place.  You will need to manually remove that file
and restart.  It's a little awkward, but it's the only way to do it with
svn.  You will see the same problem if you just go to the directory and do
an svn up.

Tully

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 10:40 AM, Patrick Bouffard <
bouffard@eecs.berkeley.edu> wrote:

> The rosinstall docs [1] tell me to update a rosinstall tree by doing
>
> rosinstall ~/workspace
>
> where ~/workspace is the location of my tree. Right now I have two
> such trees, one for c-turtle and one for unstable. In both cases I get
> the following message:
> ---
> $ rosinstall .
>
> need to specify a URI, unless you're doing an update.
> ---
>
> I'm also a bit puzzled since the help for rosinstall says:
> ---
> $ rosinstall -h
> Usage: rosinstall [options]
>
> Options:
>  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
>  -u, --update          update an existing installation (URI not needed)
>  -s SETUP_FILE, --setup_file=SETUP_FILE
>                        create environment using an existing setup file
>  -o, --overlay         use current environment to build setup file
>  -n, --nobuild         skip the build step for the ROS stack
>  --rosdep-yes          Pass through --rosdep-yes to rosmake
> ---
>
> .. and if I instead use the -u option:
> ---
> $ rosinstall -u .
> rosinstall is updating ros
> D    /home/bouffard/ros_unstable/ros/tools/roswtf
> D    /home/bouffard/ros_unstable/ros/tools/rosservice
> D    /home/bouffard/ros_unstable/ros/tools/rosparam
> ...
> D    /home/bouffard/ros_unstable/ros/core/roslib/src/roslib/distro.py
> D    /home/bouffard/ros_unstable/ros/core/roslib/src/roslib/masterapi.py
> U    /home/bouffard/ros_unstable/ros/core/roslib/src/roslib/network.py
> U    /home/bouffard/ros_unstable/ros/core/roslib/src/roslib/gentools.py
> svn: Failed to add directory
> '/home/bouffard/ros_unstable/ros/core/roslib/src/roslib/msg': an
> unversioned directory of the same name already exists
> ERROR: Failed to install tree 'ros' using command:
>        svn up  /home/bouffard/ros_unstable/ros
> Perhaps there is another installation in the way, or there are
> permissions issues.
> ---
>
> What am I doing wrong here?
>
> The same command (with the -u) does, however, work on the c-turtle tree.
>
> Also a related question: after doing rosinstall -u can I issue a
> single command that will rebuild all the packages that had updates?
>
> Thanks,
> Pat
>
> [1] http://www.ros.org/wiki/rosinstall
> _______________________________________________
> ros-users mailing list
> ros-users@code.ros.org
> https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>



-- 
Tully Foote
Systems Engineer
Willow Garage, Inc.
tfoote@willowgarage.com
(650) 475-2827