[ros-users] [Ros-developers] [Orocos-Dev] Proposal to restructure orocos_toolchain_ros

[Peter Soetens]

On Friday 03 June 2011 09:23:36 Adolfo Rodríguez Tsouroukdissian wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 8:40 AM, Ruben Smits 
<ruben.smits at mech.kuleuven.be>wrote:
> > Hi Peter,
> > 
> > I'm also forwarding to ros-mailinglists, to make sure we don't miss any
> > feedback from that community ;)
> > 
> > On Friday 03 June 2011 00:16:17 Peter Soetens wrote:
> > > I'd like to propose to restructure the orocos_toolchain_ros such that
> > > new&existing users can more easily find their way. It's mainly about
> > 
> > > renaming packages:
> > This is indeed a issue that's waiting for a proposal.
> > 
> > > 1. rtt_ros_integration -> rename to 'rtt_rosnode'
> > > -> an import("rtt_rosnode") makes your process a ros node
> > 
> > Looks ok to me
> > 
> > > 2. rtt_ros_integration_xyz_msgs -> rename to 'rtt_xyz_msgs'
> > > -> shorter notation, also makes it easier for users to update their
> > > manifest file, just prefix with 'rtt_'
> > 
> > Or make rtt a suffix? xyz_msgs_rtt?? And maybe even put them in a
> > seperate stack
> > (We only provide typekites for the common_msgs stack)
> > -> common_msgs_rtt?
> > 
> > > 3. rtt_ros_param -> rename to 'rtt_rosparam'
> > > -> consistent naming scheme, service is also named 'rosparam' and not
> > > 'ros_param'
> > 
> > Look sane to me.
> > 
> > > 4. rtt_ros_service -> ?
> > > -> a bit confusing about what it does, I wonder if the code shouldn't
> > > belong in rtt_rosnode instead, since it only provides the ros.topic()
> > > operations, which make only sense when running in a rosnode... I would
> > > also propose that this global 'ros' service is available from the
> > > moment rtt_rosnode is imported. Today you need an extra
> > > 'require("ros")' in scripting and something similar in lua.
> > 
> > Maybe we could put the functionality of rospack, rosparam and the
> > rtt_ros_service, all in the rtt_rosnode package?
> > 
> > > What do the current users/devs think ?
> 
> +1 for succinct names, rtt_rosnode sounds fine.
> 
> +1 for merging rosnode, topics, services and parameters in a single
> package. It makes sense to have a single package expose functionality
> available in ROS through a single entity, the ros::NodeHandle class. Also,
> +1 for allowing to import all of the functionality with a single
> statement. If there is  a significant overhead or bloat if you only want
> to use part of it (e.g., only topics), then also provide finer-grained
> import statements.
> 
> +1 for separating messages into different stacks. This will definitely
> prevent dependency bloat. Again, I would aim for parallelism with the
> structure of the original ROS stacks/packages (rtt_common_msgs <->
> common_msgs). This will minimize mental transformations when mapping things
> between the Orocos and ROS worlds.
> 
> Finally, if we're using rtt_* as prefix in most places, I'd rather write
> rtt_common_msgs than common_msgs_rtt. I'm open to be convinced otherwise,
> though.

I agree here too. Let's stick to one prefix, and not start mixing with suffixes.

Target release for these changes ? We're in 0.x, so it can happen at any time, 
but we should/must stick to 0.x == 2.x version mapping for clarity.

Peter