[ros-users] Request for comment REP 127

[Bill Morris]

On Thu, 2012-09-13 at 03:53 -0700, Tully Foote wrote:
> Hi All, 
> 
> 
> One of the most strongly supported features discussed in the ROS
> Buildsystem SIG was to release ROS packages as debian packages.
>  Required to do this is to have packaging and build dependencies in
> each package.  Based on our discussions on the SIG Dirk has put
> together REP 127 with a proposal to replace stack.xml and manifest.xml
> with package.xml http://www.ros.org/reps/rep-0127.html
> 
> 
> Please take a look and provide feedback.  Please reply
> to ros-sig-buildsystem at googlegroups.com for the discussion. 

Since you are getting rid of manifest.xml we would like to reiterate and
formalize support for extending the export statement. We have been
working on extending manifest.xml to support exporting URDF files and
launch files.

https://github.com/IHeartRobotics/iheart-ros-pkg/tree/master/ihe_hardware/urdf_compose 

manifest.xml 

<package>
  ....
  <export>
    <urdf_compose urdf="urdf/cup_holder.urdf"/>
  </export>
</package>

Some hardware we are developing has launch files that should be started
at bootup. To make this user friendly we would like to make a launch
manager gui, packages could then export launch files that they would
like to offer the user to start at bootup 

https://github.com/TurtleBot-Mfg/ros-system-tools/blob/master/rosmetalaunch 

manifest.xml 

<package>
  ....
  <export>
    <launch_manager launch="button_interface.launch"/>
  </export>
</package>

For some reason it looks like both of these use cases currently work and
we would like to maintain and formalize support for this. 

Also, this approach may work well for the appmanager to locate .app
files provided by various packages. 

Thanks,
Bill 
-- 
Bill Morris <bill at iheartengineering.com>
I Heart Engineering
http://www.iheartengineering.com
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