My environment:

OS: Ubuntu 12.10

OpenCV: 2.4.5 release

PCL: 1.6.0 release (built from source)

ffmpeg: 1.2 release (built from source)

VTK: 5.10.1 release (built from source)

boost: 1.50.0 (installed from the repository)

There are some reasons that I really don't want to use the default 

ffmpeg -- libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev 

VTK 5.8.0

boost 1.49

from the default repository.

Now here comes my question:

I did have my ffmpeg 1.2 installed:

please refer to http://visionopen.com/questions/ffmpeg.png 

and vtk 5.10.1 installed

http://visionopen.com/questions/vtk.png

but, when I tried to install ROS from source (refer to http://www.ros.org/wiki/groovy/Installation/Source),

I'm thinking at least, there is something like in CMake which lets me to select my own path/directory, rather than setup by ROS itself. There should be existing such a freedom to let me specify which version and which directory of ffmpeg, which version and which directory of vtk.

But, according to http://www.ros.org/wiki/groovy/Installation/Source, I can't find such a freedom. Can anybody help to let me know how to build ROS from source based on the dependencies that I myself am able to specify?

Thank you very much.

Best Regards

--
Welcome to Vision Open
http://www.visionopen.com