[ros-users] Packaging Ros: a nightmare?

William Woodall wwoodall at willowgarage.com
Thu Oct 18 18:25:37 UTC 2012


To help with this exact issue (we would like to expand our support to
fedora and Homebrew), I have been working on bloom recently and it is now
architected such that writing a generator for a specific platform is easier
to do and can be done in an external python library (i.e. you don't have to
fork bloom to add a generator).

For Debian, however, the generator is not ubuntu specific...  The only
change that should be required is to pass 'squeeze' to git-buildpackage via
bloom instead of 'precise' or 'quantal'.  I can spin up a debian of pcl for
'squeeze' using bloom and let you try it out if you like.  Or if you want
to try it yourself:

# In a previously released bloom repository like (
https://github.com/ros-gbp/pcl-release)
$ git bloom-generate rosdebian --distros squeeze --prefix release --os-name
debian -- groovy

That command should produce a tag like
'debian/ros-groovy-pcl_1.6.0-0_squeeze' which will contain pcl with debian
files overlaid that should work with squeeze.  This doesn't mean you won't
run into missing rosdep entries for squeeze or other build/buildsystem
problems, but this should just work, and if it doesn't please file a ticket
on bloom's issue tracker.  You can also checkout to one of the released
tags and build the debian locally:

$ git checkout debian/ros-groovy-pcl_1.6.0-0_squeeze
$ git-buildpackage -uc -us --git-ignore-branch

That should build the source deb on squeeze (I don't have squeeze to test
here, nor have I tried the pbuilder fake root method).

I hope to finish the documentation for bloom 0.2 and release it today, but
you can grab the source from master and run 'sudo python setup.py install'
if you want to try it now.

--

On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 9:31 AM, Leopold Palomo-Avellaneda <leo at alaxarxa.net
> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
>
> --
> --
> Linux User 152692
> Catalonia
> _______________________________________________
> ros-users mailing list
> ros-users at code.ros.org
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>



-- 
William Woodall
Willow Garage - Software Engineer
wwoodall at willowgarage.com
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