Yeah, the system dependencies such as gazebo would definitely be problematic, so I understand if it isn't feasible. Maybe worth coming up with a quick list of what system dependencies have problematic version changes between precise and trusty, to gauge the difficulty of this approach? On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 12:05 PM, William Woodall wrote: > On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 4:36 PM, Jon Binney wrote: > >> As has already been identified in this thread, building Hydro from >>> source on other systems (Ubuntu Saucy, Ubuntu Trusty) currently works >>> quite smoothly, with the caveat being the ~30 minute build time for >>> Hydro-desktop, which is of course dependent on one's internet >>> bandwidth and system performance. >>> >> >> If it builds from source on other platforms, would there still be >> significant developer effort to create debs? Or do you mean that only the >> core packages in hydro build from source on Saucy/Trusty? >> >> The ideal situation from a developer point of view would be if there were >> indigo debs for ubuntu precise. This would allow people who are running >> hydro/precise to update their own packages so that they work with indigo, >> and then to install ubuntu trusty on their machines. It would be >> essentially the same as when we switched from electric to fuerte - fuerte >> had debs on lucid, but also had debs for precise. >> > > Generally any time you port forward (add debs for a new ubuntu for an > existing ROS distro) or backwards (create debs for a new ROS distro on > ubuntu platforms that are older or unsupported), there is going to be some > significant work involved. > > However, we are not as far along in the Indigo first time releases, so > having bloom start to make debian files for Indigo on Precise is tractable, > but still a lot of work to re-bloom already released things. The other > problem with backporting Indigo to precise is the changes in dependencies. > This is not generally a problem with things like boost or log4cxx, but in > this case Gazebo is a good example of a problem. Gazebo's default in > precise is 1.x and in trusty it is 2.x, so now any ROS packages which > should be released into Indigo not only need to update for 2.x Gazebo, but > also needs to be backwards compatible with Gazebo 1.x. To avoid that, you > could install the gazebo2 deb on precise for Indigo, but I believe (could > be wrong) that the gazebo2 deb cannot be installed at the same time as the > gazebo1 deb, so then you wouldn't be able to have Indigo above gazebo and > Hydro above gazebo installed at the same time. > > Gazebo is just an example, and while there are solutions to these > problems, they always take effort, not just for us but for maintainers. > > Unlike Hydro on Trusty, I believe Indigo on Precise is tractable, but > still a big cost in terms of engineering time. > > >> >> That being said, I understand that it's a huge effort to support extra >> distributions, so this may not be practical. >> >> -Jon >> >> >> >>> >>> Taking these considerations into account, we think the best approach >>> is to improve the experience of building ROS distributions from >>> source, so they can be used more easily on distros for which they were >>> not originally targeted. There are various things that could be done >>> to improve the build-from-source process: better/easier documentation >>> [1], better/easier software tools to automate the process [2], and so >>> on. If you are interested in participating, ros-sig-buildsystem [3] >>> would be a good place for such documentation/tool development and >>> discussion. >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Morgan >>> >>> [1] http://wiki.ros.org/hydro/Installation/Source >>> [2] perhaps the tools could display cat photos in ASCII art during the >>> build. >>> [3] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ros-sig-buildsystem >>> >>> On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Jochen Sprickerhof >>> wrote: >>> > * Michael Fritscher >>> [2014-03-27 18:08]: >>> >> But in my experience, apt can handle about every kind of abuse fairly >>> well - >>> >> to be honest I've done way trickier things in the past without any >>> problems. >>> > >>> > Yes, I did these tricks myself aswell. But as Jack wrote, we should not >>> > propose it as the official way, as it's too fragile to maintain in >>> > larger installations. But if you want to do it cleanly, use a chroot >>> > (have a look at the schroot package), this is what I use nowadays. >>> > >>> > Cheers Jochen >>> > >>> > _______________________________________________ >>> > ros-users mailing list >>> > ros-users@lists.ros.org >>> > http://lists.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ >>> ros-users mailing list >>> ros-users@lists.ros.org >>> http://lists.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users >>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> ros-users mailing list >> ros-users@lists.ros.org >> http://lists.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users >> >> > > > -- > William Woodall > ROS Development Team > william@osrfoundation.org > http://williamjwoodall.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > ros-users mailing list > ros-users@lists.ros.org > http://lists.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users > >