I've written up a tutorial on how to install indigo in a chroot on ubuntu 13.04 and compile ros packages: http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/InstallingIndigoInChroot It works for me on 13.04; fixes are welcome! On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 3:00 PM, Jon Binney wrote: > 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 < > william@osrfoundation.org> 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 >> >> >