[ros-users] Packaging Ros: a nightmare?

[Jack O'Quin]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 7:51 AM, Jochen Sprickerhof
<ros-users at jochen.sprickerhof.de> wrote:
> Hi Leopold,
>
> I am a Debian user as well and share your concerns. Part of the problem
> is, that ROS is trying to be a lot of different things (upstream
> development, build system, dependency management system, packaging
> system, package repository, cross platform) and by this it's duplicating
> a lot of features that are actually provided by Debian/Ubuntu. The other
> problem is, that the Ubuntu support is so good, that for most of us it's
> easier to just install an Ubuntu release instead of working on the
> packages.
>
> I think in the long run we have two possible ways to go. Either we
> continue to maintain ROS as a add-on to Ubuntu or we repackage it
> according to the packaging guidelines. This doesn't need to be an
> exclusive or, a possible way would be to stabilize the core components
> first (i.e. move them to right places according to the FHS, add proper
> sonames, split the packages, fix dependencies..) and integrate them into
> Debian, so we could still use the old tools later. Once we have them in
> Debian/Ubuntu maintaining the rest should be a lot easier.
>
> Groovy and catkin are definitely a step in the right direction but there
> is still a lot of work to be done and I don't think we can manage this
> without support from the core ROS developers, or we would duplicate a lot
> of work.

Jochen and Leopold:

It would help for both of you to bring your knowledge, experience and
concerns to the ROS buildsystem SIG:

 https://groups.google.com/group/ros-sig-buildsystem

Right now, we are focused on getting Groovy properly documented and
ready to ship.

But, the kinds of issues you raise are essential to the ongoing
discussion, and will continue for Hydro.
-- 
 joq