[ros-users] Packaging Ros: a nightmare?

[Leopold Palomo-Avellaneda]

Hi,

I would like to write this mail in a constructive, positive way, so please, 
understand my complaints as "warnings" to improve ROS.

I have spent a lot of hours trying to package ROS fuerte for a Debian distro 
(Squeeze), and I have to admit that I desist. First because the difficulties 
to package a version of ROS that probably will expire soon (November: Groovy 
release?). Second, to package a version of ROS that has a lot of issues (pcl, 
perception ...) means a lot of work patching at least to have something that 
compile!!!

I understand the gentoo guy about the question of download source tarballs. My 
feeling is that ROS is overflowed of repos, versions, packages, etc. I admit 
that I don't understand the policy of the releases of ROS. I have found 
several versions of ros-fuerte. For example, I could compile pcl_percepcion 
from a version of source of July (with a pcl1.5) but I couldn't repeat the 
same in September. Ros install download a different version.

Also, not obey fhs structure is a problem. I hope that catkin could help to 
solve that issue. As a Debian user, and amateur packager I try to follow the 
Debian guidelines. There are very good. I have packaged ros-fuerte-base and 
ros-fuerte-rx, but I have stuck with the stacks, specially perception_pcl.

I don't know if in general, the ROS users just use Ubuntu and make apt-get and 
doesn't take any more question and just to develop their robotics application. 
Maybe it's just because I do a half robotic /system job but maintain a group 
of boxes (worst in a multiuser environment) with ROS it's not easy.

So, it does worthwhile to spend more time to try to have a Fuerte version for 
Squeeze and up? Or it's better to wait and concentrate effortss in Groovy?

Regards,

Leopold


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