Hi Wim!

We tried that already, but ran into problems exactly with the API
compatibility. For example, the interface of one solver changed in the way,
that it now returns a double instead of an int.
So, we expect similar problems in other parts of the ROS code.
But the suggestion of Ruben seems promising, especially because that package
has a different name. So, hopefully my code gets forced to take the new
stuff in orocos_kdl, instead of using old things from the kdl package.
We will try that out and will report about the results.

Thanks for your help!

:-) Marcus



2011/2/10 Wim Meeussen <meeussen@willowgarage.com>

> Marcus,
>
> > we are having problems running recent versions of KDL with ROS.
> > Because KDL is locked under ROS, we had to come up with other ways to
> change
> > or extend existing KDL code.
> [...]
> > We also tried to "overlay" the KDL package with a new version by changing
> > the ROS_PACKAGE_PATH. But this does not work for prebuild ROS parts. And
> if
> > we would build ROS from source, we probably will run into problems with
> ROS
> > parts relying on old versions of KDL.
>
> You should be able to overlay on any set of ROS packages, even if you
> use precompiled Debian packages. Just make sure that your own version
> of KDL comes first in your ROS_PACKAGE_PATH.
>
> If you overlay on the Debian packages, you need to make sure that the
> version of KDL you overlay is binary compatible with the version of
> compatibility <http://www.dict.cc/englisch-deutsch/compatibility.html>
> KDL in ROS.  I think it's likely that this option won't work.
>
> If you compile ROS from source, your version of KDL only needs to be
> API compatible for the part of the KDL API that is used by other ROS
> packages.  If you're not modifying any core KDL classes, then this
> option will work fine for you.  As Ruben mentioned, you probably want
> to overlay with the KDL package available from their git repo.
>
> Wim
>
> --
> --
> Wim Meeussen
> Willow Garage Inc.
> <http://www.willowgarage.com)
>