[ros-users] Alternative package dependencies

[Dirk Thomas]

> Is it so awful if the user ends up with redundant packages installed?

The point is it might not be possible to install one of the dependencies on some platforms.
I.e. when building the ROS GUI we need either PyQt with SIP or PySide with Shiboken.
But on "older" Ubuntu versions (before natty?) Shiboken bindings will not compile correctly.
So specifying both may lead to errors on some platforms and it would not be clear to the user that those can be ignored in this special case.

Currently we do have two meta packages which can be used to "rosdep install" either of those two dependencies.
But since they are not real dependencies for the core package the user must call the specific package explicitly.

But may be we should for now just specify both dependencies?

Dirk