OS X Yosemite (10.10) Rosdep entries for vtk and gazebo2

[JeremyCade]

Homebrew VTK Update

Recent updates to the homebrew/science/vtk brew have created issues for ROS Indigo install on OSX.
This can be fixed by removing the --python and --qt options and replacing them with --with-qt on the vtk homebrew dependency.

ROS & Gazebo

As noted on the Which combination of ROS/Gazebo versions to use page, ROS Indigo is only compatible with the Gazebo 2.x branch.

[wjwwood]

The problem with this change is that hydro still needs gazebo1.x. If I merge this then anyone who resolves the key "gazebo" on OS X will get gazebo2, even people trying to install for hydro.

Unfortunately there are not a lot of good options here, but we can:

• Have packages update their dependencies to be gazebo2 instead of gazebo in Indigo
• Have rosdep install one or the other based on the ROS distro

Neither are good solutions since the first requires changing several packages and maintaining at least two rosdep rules for gazebo. And the second one is also not great mostly because rosdep does not support that type of rule, where one thing is installed for one ROS distro and another for a different one.

I think the "right" thing to do is to have another rosdep rule "gazebo2" which points to gazebo2 in Homebrew. Then we should update the packages in ROS Indigo which directly depend on gazebo to directly depend on gazebo2 instead. This shouldn't be too bad since most people get to gazebo through one of the gazebo_ros_pkgs packages.

Regardless of the final solution I don't think merging this change as-is makes sense.

[wjwwood]

I edited the above comment; apparently I'm having a hard time with words today.

[vrabaud]

@wjwwood , what should be do with that one ?

[wjwwood]

I should figure out what should be done 😛. I don't know. Merging this will cause problems for people using ROS hydro on OS X, but not merging it will cause problems for Indigo.

[dirk-thomas]

I think we have to make a call on this. Either decide to "break" on one distro (where I would prefer to break Hydro and make it work well on Indigo) or do the necessary changes to support both.

[wjwwood]

I have a plan which allows users to pick different dependencies based on the Homebrew tap they choose, but I haven't had time to implement it.

Basically we'd make the rosdep rule for gazebo resolve to the gazebo_for_ros Homebrew formula. When installing hydro you'd "tap" the ros/hydro-deps tap which contains a version of the gazebo_for_ros formula which depends on gazebo, but the ros/indigo-deps tap will have a different version of the gazebo_for_ros formula which depends on gazebo5. This would be applied to all the affected formula. This way rosdep always resolves to the same key, but then we can change what the key ends up installing based on which Homebrew tap the user selects. It still doesn't allow a side by side setup with Hydro and Indigo, but at least people can choose.

This will take quite some work to implement, so I'm not sure when I'll get to it.

/cc @scpeters

[scpeters]

Sounds reasonable. There are separate formula for each gazebo version (gazebo for 1.9, gazeboN for each release after) but they cannot be brew linked at the same time.

[dirk-thomas]

Should we aim to address this before Jade is being released?

[scpeters]

We added new rosdep keys for gazebo5 in jade. So I think this is currently just a conflict between hydro / indigo, which have the same rosdep key for different versions of gazebo.

[wjwwood]

Yeah, this shouldn't be trouble for Jade. I was mistaken above about gazebo5 and indigo, but this still applies for ogre which is 1.7 in hydro and 1.8/9 in indigo and jade.

[dirk-thomas]

Can we close this and if necessary convert it into a ticket?

[wjwwood]

Closing in favor of: #8912