[ros-users] [Ros-developers] Fwd: rosinstall refactoring

[Felix Kolbe]

Hi Thibault,

I'm still trying to figure the rosinstall update. You may jump at my
wrong assumption:

Install: "rosinstall ~/ros http://[...].rosinstall" will copy that
file to the directory, and furthermore behaves like the update.

Update: "rosinstall ~/ros" will parse the .rosinstall and
checkout/clone/update the mentioned directories.
As these directory descriptions in .rosinstall point to tags/versions,
and I understand these to be persistent from the SCM, any update on
those URLs won't change the disk contents at all, beside reverting
local changes if requested. So I don't see where the .rosinstall may
be altered. Rosinstall doesn't know which URL the file was initially
loaded from, so there is no update link for that file. Which anyway
would not allow it to serve as a purpose specific setup file.

The idea with git for .rosinstall I will try, at least to understand
whats happening.

Thanks,
Felix



2011/7/21 Thibault Kruse <kruset at in.tum.de>:
> Hi Felix,
>
> thanks for the feedback.
>
> As for diff:
> No, diff as suggested in the REP runs diff on all SCM (git, svn, mercurial)
> controlled directories and gives you the results. So it shows what files you
> have modified in all SCM controlled directories mentioned in your
> .rosinstall.
>
> What you suggest is something like what aptitude does, asking the user for
> confirmation before executing any change. This would be possible with
> rosinstall as well, such as a message:
> ----------------------------
> Rosinstall will perform the following changes:
> - modify .rosinstall
> - modify setup.sh
> - svn update foo
> - git fetch bar
> Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
> ----------------------------
>
> Or even display a diff on the setup files to change. And aptitude has a
> switch "-y Assume that the answer to simple yes/no questions is 'yes'"
>
> There is no such feature in rosinstall today (and was not planned in the
> REP, yet).
> There are tickets #3492 and #3521 waiting for Tully to comment on, which
> would already make rosinstall explain more.
>
>
> rosinstall currently can change any of the directories it knows under
> version control (by running e.g. svn update), as well as the .rosinstall and
> setup.* files. One thing you can do is to put your .rosinstall and setup.*
> files into a lightweight version control like git that way creating backups
> and going back on these files becomes easy.
> Though for that, you'd need to know such an SCM well enough and be happy to
> use it for that purpose.
>
> regards,
>  Thibault
>
> On 07/21/2011 01:46 PM, Felix Kolbe wrote:
>>
>> Hello Thibault et al.,
>>
>> I appreciate your working on rosinstall. It isn't that easy to
>> understand. And I really hate running it for an update because I get
>> absolutely no idea what had been changed and therefore will help or
>> disturb my development. If that's what your --diff is to be meant for,
>> that would be great! (Let me know if I missed the
>> view-detailed-changes-before-updating feature somewhere.)
>>
>> Best Regards,
>> Felix
>
>