[ros-users] Archlinux dependencies handling

[Traveler]

I was waiting for more responses but I guess there are not (yet) a lot 
of ROS user on Arch.

Regarding a concerted effort in integrating ROS to Arch, I think for now 
we should proceed ad-hoc rather than try to form a group. This should be 
fairly effective since the ROS install stuff is on github and the 
Archlinux packaging stuff is mostly in AUR.

I'm concentrating my effort on fuerte and plan to create a AUR package 
for it once it's released. I'll try to keep my packaging stuff cloned on 
github.

Regarding python, hopefully ubuntu will backport a python2 link to 
earlier versions, which would allow ROS to follow python PEP 0394, which 
would more or less solve the problem. Meanwhile I link python->python2 
and I have not run into any problems yet.

Traveler

On 03/15/2012 09:58 PM, Erwin José Lopez Pulgarin wrote:
> I want to comment on this subject.
>
>     /So it makes sense to me that automatically installing AUR packages/
>     /should NOT be done by ROS.  Thoughts?/
>
>
> I agree with this as well. I will comment my experience and after that 
> propose my solution.
>
> When I installed ROS in my Archlinux pc, I had several troubles with 
> python and gcc dependencies and the instructions in 
> ArchWiki weren't complete. After some internet search and struggling, 
> I completed the installation and added the process to ArchWiki.
>
> Currently one of the main problems is around GCC support, being gcc 
> 4.6 the stable release in Archlinux, but some packages in ROS don't 
> compile with this version; to fix this, you must install gcc 4.5 or 
> less from AUR (but this at the same time posses troubles because from 
> AUR, only an extra gcc installation can be installed, when installing 
> a third gcc, for example gcc4.3 for Matlab MEX support, an error 
> occurs). Also for python2 bindings, although AUR provides the 
> packages, it troubles in the final implementation for the global 
> variables and linkers, you have to fix this always manually.
>
> The solution at the long time, that doesn't involve changing to 
> Ubuntu, is work with the Arch community, first to create a package 
> that install ROS and handles its dependencies internally, and latter 
> take this to an official community package.
>
> If this decision is made, and enough people is willing to cooperate, 
> we can achieve this. For this an any contribution to ROS, you can 
> count me in, I am relatively new to ROS, I am using it in my 
> undergraduate thesis (waiting for the robotino api2 drivers), but I 
> have experience working in open source projects and I'm always happy 
> to help.
>
> -- 
> Gracias
>
> Erwin José López Pulgarín
> Coordinador General Grupo CEIMTUN
> Ingeniería Mecatrónica
> Universidad Nacional de Colombia

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