[ros-users] Packaging Ros: a nightmare?

Leopold Palomo-Avellaneda leo at alaxarxa.net
Thu Oct 18 16:31:04 UTC 2012


A Dijous 18 Octubre 2012, Jochen Sprickerhof va escriure:
> 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.

Hi Jochen,

I think that you have made a good abstract of the situation. 

> 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.

I don't know if maintain two ways is a good idea or waste of efford. However, 
I think that it's better to use anything done. I have repackaged a lot of 
software (many times from your package: pcl, ps-engine, openni, ...) but 
making some minor modifications (the main are names of packages and 
dependencies). The FHS issue is a big wall. But I agree with with about that 
having in in Debian/Ubuntu after will be easy for all.

> 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.

I agree.

Now, although in my previous mail I was very frustrated, after repackage pcl 
(1.5.2) using your debian directory with minor modifications, perception_pcl 
compile. And after all, I have been able to have a complete ROS full in a 
Debian Squeeze. :-)

Maybe we should work more coordinately ...

Regards,

Leo




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