[ros-users] clarifying package installation 'best practices'?

[G.A. vd. Hoorn - 3ME]

All,


just wondering whether we should somehow clarify what the current 'best
practices' are for installing packages onto a ROS pc. I see a lot of
people that assume that building from source (after cloning from a
repository) is _the_ way to do things.

Apart from the fact that this is essentially a waste of time and effort,
it also often leads to problems (as they forget to check for and / or
install all dependencies first), which then results in numerous ROS
Answers questions. Having the sources locally also seems to invite some
users to start editing / hard coding parameters (such as IPs / serial
ports) into nodes, which is obviously unwanted.

Somehow I have a feeling that the prominent placing of the repository
URL in the Package Summary contributes to the confusion.

Would it perhaps be an idea to add a one-liner to the 'Package Summary'
on wiki pages of released packages that shows users how to install it
("Installation: sudo apt-get install ros-$release-pkg-name", although
that is distribution specific)? Or a link to a (new) wiki page that
explains how to install packages in general (with the from-source option
shown last)?


Gijs