On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Dirk Thomas <dthomas@willowgarage.com> wrote:
(even if you can with the current catkin by passing in custom folder for build/devel/install).

Anyway we are looking for ways to make catkin_make have a bit more sugar to make that tool easier and more convenient to use.

Then what if we support the following new but thin, tools for people who want to use catkin_make instead of full-on-catkin but don't like having to jump around their filesystem in the standard CMake workflow. Note I use the current catkin_make script in `catkin init` to illustrate what that should do. Also note that this preserves what are basically pass-through calls to cmake and make 

`catkin init`:
    mkdir -p .catkin/build .catkin/install .catkin/devel
    catkin_make  --build .catkin/build --src . --devel .catkin/build
`catkin cmake [cmake_args]`:
    cd /path/to/ws/.catkin/build && cmake /path/to/ws $cmake_args
`catkin make [make_args]`:
    cd /path/to/ws/.catkin/build && make $make_args
`catkin ninja [ninja_args]`:
    cd /path/to/ws/.catkin/build && ninja $ninja_args
`catkin source`:
    source /path/to/ws/.catkin/devel/setup.sh

Also it's worth noting that the current version catkin_make ignores the "--devel" argument.

-j

--
Jonathan Bohren
PhD Student
Dynamical Systems and Control Laboratory
Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics
The Johns Hopkins University

(707) 520-4736
jbo@jhu.edu