[ros-users] ROS usability

[Dirk Thomas]

On 20.02.2014 05:06, Michael Fritscher wrote:
>
> Another problem is in my oppinion the library-hell problem. ROS packages are tightly tied with specific library version (e.g. libboost) which (roughly) exists only on one specific distro-version. This
> makes it almost inpossible to use binary versions of ros on another distros. Perhaps this can be solved that the binary packages depend on e.g. "libboost-1.42 | roslibboost-groovy" - so either the
> distro-version or a ros-own version can be used.

@Michael Fritscher

Afaik boost does neither guarantee ABI nor API compatibility for (minor) releases.
Therefore asking for that "feature" for ROS is just unrealistic and your proposed way of an alternate Debian dependency is just not going to work.

The only option with boost is to build it from source against the specific version you want to use.
That is also a reason why the ROS Debian packages are distro specific - using them on a different then they are compiled for is highly not recommended.

Cheers,
- Dirk