This seems really useful, I find my self setting up work spaces often and/or
doing bad things like adding all my packages to one folder in my
ros_packge_path (something like ~/devel/ros/stacks).  I think an addition to
the example work flow might be to set a current (persistent) work space so
that future commands will assume that you are working in /tmp/work unless
otherwise specified.  This would also allow for auto-resourcing of the
setup.bash in that work space.

--

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William Woodall
Graduate Software Engineering
Auburn University
w@auburn.edu
wjwwood@gmail.com
williamjwoodall.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 11:06 PM, Brian Gerkey <gerkey@willowgarage.com>wrote:

> hi,
>
> Exploiting Ken's work on a version-specific roslocate index [1], I put
> together a new tool, tentatively called `rosworkspace`.  The idea is
> that it will help you manage your ROS workspace (aka overlay), which
> can get kind of complicated when you're developing several stacks at
> once, or frequently switching between development contexts.
>
> rosworkspace can pull any released stack, as well as stacks that
> depend on it, from source, using either the development branch or the
> latest release tag, conditioned on your ROS distro.  It's really just
> a front-end for rosinstall, with some calls to roslocate and rosstack.
>
> Example usage:
> ------
> # Start with the system installation
> $ source /opt/ros/unstable/setup.bash
> # Create a workspace, bootstrapping from ROS_ROOT
> # and ROS_PACKAGE_PATH
> $ rosworkspace /tmp/work init
> # Now I have an empty workspace in /tmp/work
> $ source /tmp/work/setup.bash
> # I want to hack on navigation
> $ rosworkspace /tmp/work add navigation
> # Now my workspace contains the unstable development branch for
> # navigation, as well as all stacks that depend on navigation.
> $ source /tmp/work/setup.bash
> $ rospack find amcl
> /tmp/work/navigation/amcl
> $ rosstack find pr2_plugs
> /tmp/work/pr2_plugs
> # Now I'm done hacking on navigation, and I want to revert to the
> # system install
> $ rosworkspace /tmp/work delete navigation
> $ source /tmp/work/setup.bash
> $ rospack find amcl
> /opt/ros/unstable/stacks/navigation/amcl
> $ rosstack find pr2_plugs
> /opt/ros/unstable/stacks/pr2_plugs
> ------
>
> To give it a try, grab the latest rosinstall and adjust your PATH:
> $ svn co https://code.ros.org/svn/ros/stacks/ros_release/trunk/rosinstall
> $ export PATH=`pwd`/rosinstall/scripts:$PATH
>
> Comments most welcome.  I'm interested to hear whether such a tool
> would be useful, and if so, what command-line syntax and defaults
> would best support common workflows.
>
>        brian.
>
> [1] https://code.ros.org/lurker/message/20110711.160222.666ecfe4.en.html
> _______________________________________________
> ros-users mailing list
> ros-users@code.ros.org
> https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>