[ros-users] ROS package git repository conventions?

Ibrahim Awwal ibrahim.awwal at berkeley.edu
Thu Aug 18 22:04:51 UTC 2011 

Hey Ken,

I copied the rosinstall file you had to a git repository, the latest
version should always be accessible at the following URL:

https://raw.github.com/rll/berkeley-ros-pkg/master/berkeley-ros-pkg.rosinstall

Whenever you're ready you can switch to using that, and whenever we're
ready we'll update that with paths to github repositories (currently
running into some snags with the svn2git conversion but I think I've
figured it out).

-Ibrahim

On Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:25:45 -0700, Ken Conley <kwc at willowgarage.com>
wrote:
> Thanks for the great suggestions.  I'm now testing a new version of
> the indexer that downloads N rosinstall files into the combined index.
>  If this new version works, repo maintainers are welcome to take over
> hosting of their rosinstall files.  You can see a list of the ones I'm
> currently testing with here:
> 
> https://code.ros.org/svn/ros/stacks/rosorg/trunk/rosdoc_rosorg/repos/
> 
> These are then indexed here:
> 
>
https://code.ros.org/svn/ros/stacks/rosorg/trunk/rosdoc_rosorg/repos.list
> 
> Another nice aspect of this approach is that the rosinstall file is
> multi-purpose.  Not only does it feed the indexer, but it can
> generally be used with rosinstall to download all stacks in your
> repositories.
> 
>  - Ken
> 
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 9:30 AM, Ken Conley <kwc at willowgarage.com>
wrote:
>> 2011/8/16 Lorenz Mösenlechner <moesenle at in.tum.de>:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'm not sure if this approach is really practical. The problem with
>>> git submodules is that they reference a specific revision in another
>>> repository. That means whenever I add a new package to a stack and I
>>> want to have it indexed, I need to make sure that I update the
>>> repository with the submodule, too. The same holds whenever I make an
>>> API change or something that I want to have indexed.
>>
>> Thanks for the explanation.
>>
>>> What about using a magic rosinstall file in a repository. For
>>> instance, if the git repository tum-ros-pkg.git contains a file
>>> tum-ros-pkg.rosinstall on toplevel, could the crawler maybe use it to
>>> find the actual repositories with the stacks?
>>
>> I like this implementation approach, though I would make it less
>> magical.  Instead of pointing to tum-ros-pkg.git, we could have a
>> meta-indexer that listed these rosinstall files and produce a combined
>> index.
>>
>> Overall, it doesn't suffer from the checkout naming issues and works
>> for any git/hg/svn/bzr-based repository.  In the future, it
>> potentially also allows repo maintainers to produce rosinstall index
>> files for different ROS distributions.
>>
>>  - Ken
>>
>>> Lorenz
>>>
>>>> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 9:04 AM, Lorenzo Riano
>>>> <lorenzo.riano at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> > Ok, a more practical example:
>>>> >
>>>> > We at Ulster have a shared account on GitHub called 
>>>> > "uu-isrc-robotics". We
>>>> > started with one repository, called uu-isrc-robotics-pr2-pkgs that
>>>> > contained
>>>> > one stack and some packages in the stack. When we released the
>>>> > rubik's cube
>>>> > solver code, I decided to keep it separate from the other stacks
(to
>>>> > avoid
>>>> > people having to pull a lot of code they don't need). I guess this
>>>> > will
>>>> > become common practice in the future, say Berkely stack becomes a
>>>> > collection
>>>> > of several stacks hosted by the same user (but not in the same
>>>> > repository).
>>>> >
>>>> > Now the problem is that every time we release a new stack, we'll
>>>> > have to
>>>> > notify ros-users, get a confirmation, and wait for the the crawler
>>>> > to find
>>>> > the new stack. So my idea would be to have a crawler that monitors
a
>>>> > user
>>>> > account (for example "uu-isrc-robotics") and automatically finds
and
>>>> > indexes
>>>> > which repositories contain stacks.
>>>> >
>>>> > I hope it makes sense now
>>>>
>>>> The above implementation that is a bit trickier, as it involves the
>>>> crawler having explicit capabilities with github.  As the crawler is
>>>> just a rosinstall file, this requires some big feature additions.
>>>>
>>>> Also, the major issue I see is that the implicit mapping of the
>>>> repository name to a checkout name is not correct.  This is important
>>>> as ROS sets the stack name based on the directory name.
>>>>
>>>> As an alternative, you could just create a repository called
>>>> 'uu-isrc-robotics'.  When you create a new stack repo on git, you
>>>> could add it as a submodule.  Our indexer would only have to know
>>>> about uu-isrc-robotics and would get updates whenever you update that
>>>> repo.   Still no need to notify ros-users, and it has an explicit
>>>> opt-in for each repository -- for example, for most github accounts,
>>>> there are several non-ROS-related repositories as well.
>>>>
>>>> So my question was basically, why the github-centric approach,
instead
>>>> of just git submodules?  I don't use git, so I don't know if there
are
>>>> some deficiencies with submodules that could be corrected with the
>>>> github approach.
>>>>
>>>>  - Ken
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> >
>>>> > On 16 August 2011 16:52, Ken Conley <kwc at willowgarage.com> wrote:
>>>> >>
>>>> >> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Lorenzo Riano
>>>> >> <lorenzo.riano at gmail.com>
>>>> >> wrote:
>>>> >> > I have received some emails of people who wanted to run the
>>>> >> > rubik's cube
>>>> >> > stack, but they didn't want to pull the whole UU stack just
>>>> >> > because the
>>>> >> > rubik's stack depends on a single package in UU (OK it's a bit
>>>> >> > complicated...)
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > Anyway, what I think would be interesting is to have the ROS
>>>> >> > indexer
>>>> >> > scan
>>>> >> > the packages of a (for example) GitHub user and retrieve all the
>>>> >> > stacks.
>>>> >> > This way Berkley, TUM, UU and so on will have an account on
>>>> >> > GitHub (or
>>>> >> > google code or whatever) with several repositories, each of them
>>>> >> > being a
>>>> >> > stack.
>>>> >>
>>>> >> What is the argument for this over, say, git submodules?  There
>>>> >> are
>>>> >> many issues on the implementation side of doing this, so I'm
>>>> >> wondering
>>>> >> what the advantage would be.
>>>> >>
>>>> >>  - Ken
>>>> >>
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > I hope this makes sense...
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > Lorenzo
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > On 15 August 2011 21:05, Ibrahim Awwal
>>>> >> > <ibrahim.awwal at berkeley.edu>
>>>> >> > wrote:
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >> Hi ROS users,
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >> We're considering/planning on switching to git/github for the
>>>> >> >> Berkeley
>>>> >> >> ROS package. What are the conventions on structure and such
that
>>>> >> >> people
>>>> >> >> are using? With svn we have a url like this
>>>> >> >> http://ros.berkeley.edu/svn/berkeley-ros-pkg/ with all our
>>>> >> >> stuff, with
>>>> >> >> git would it be preferrable to have one repo called
>>>> >> >> berkeley-ros-pkg or
>>>> >> >> separate repos for each stack and maybe link them together with
>>>> >> >> submodules? What are other people doing that are using git? It
>>>> >> >> seems
>>>> >> >> like at least TUM is using separate repos per project on their
>>>> >> >> git repo
>>>> >> >> (which seems to be the much more sane route) but I was
wondering
>>>> >> >> if
>>>> >> >> there was any requirement to have something called foo-ros-pkg
>>>> >> >> somewhere. Thanks,
>>>> >> >>
>>>> >> >> -Ibrahim
>>>> >> >> _______________________________________________
>>>> >> >> ros-users mailing list
>>>> >> >> ros-users at code.ros.org
>>>> >> >> https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > phone: +44 (0)28 71375187
>>>> >> > email: l.riano at ulster.ac.uk, lorenzo.riano at gmail.com
>>>> >> > skype: lorenzo.riano
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > Webpage: http://isrc.ulster.ac.uk/Staff/LRiano/Contact.html
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> > _______________________________________________
>>>> >> > ros-users mailing list
>>>> >> > ros-users at code.ros.org
>>>> >> > https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> >
>>>> >> _______________________________________________
>>>> >> ros-users mailing list
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>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> > phone: +44 (0)28 71375187
>>>> > email: l.riano at ulster.ac.uk, lorenzo.riano at gmail.com
>>>> > skype: lorenzo.riano
>>>> >
>>>> > Webpage: http://isrc.ulster.ac.uk/Staff/LRiano/Contact.html
>>>> >
>>>> > _______________________________________________
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>>>> >
>>>> >
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>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Lorenz Mösenlechner            | moesenle at in.tum.de
>>> Technische Universität München | Boltzmannstr. 3
>>> 85748 Garching bei München     | Germany
>>> http://ias.cs.tum.edu/         | Tel: +49 (89) 289-26910
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> ros-users at code.ros.org
>>> https://code.ros.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-users
>>>
>>
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-- 
-Ibrahim Awwal

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