catkin_workspace - A Friendly tool for managing catkin workspaces

catkin_workspace is intended to be a friendly tool for creating and managing catkin workspaces and rosinstall files.

In particular, it should:

• Create the src directory automatically
• Create and update the rosinstall file
• Update the workspace whenever the rosinstall file changes
• Install dependencies automatically
• Use system packages as dependencies where possible
• This means installing from debs whenever possible
• When asking for a specific package, it should still download the source, even if debs are available
• Warn the user if they try to use their home directory as a workspace

It should not:

• invoke catkin_make or otherwise try to do the build
• create new packages

Sample workflows

Check out, build and use package from github:

. /opt/ros/hydro/setup.bash
cd catkin_ws
catkin_workspace create https://github.com/sample/ros-package.git
# create src
# add https://github.com/sample/ros-package.git to the rosinstall
# invoke wstool to update the workspace
# rosdep install --from-paths src --ignore-src
catkin_make
. devel/setup.bash

Check out navigation from source, for experimentation:

. /opt/ros/hydro/setup.bash
cd catkin_ws
catkin_workspace create navigation
# create src
# add the src entry for navigation to the rosinstall file
# invoke wstool to update the workspace
# install dependencies using rosdep
# resolve any remaining dependencies using rosinstall_generator
# Tell the user where navigation has been checked out to:
echo "navigation has been checked out to src/navigation/"

# USER modifies src/navigation/
catkin_make
. devel/setup.bash

Update the workspace and rebuild it:

cd catkin_ws
catkin_workspace upgrade
catkin_make

Open questions

• Is catkin_workspace really the best name?
• Should catkin_workspace be able to maintain a full source tree or just user overlays?
• If checking out individual packages, will catkin_workspace ever need to use rosinstall_generator to find dependencies?
• How do we resolve binary vs source-only dependencies?

1. invoke rosdep to figure out which dependencies are installable from binaries
2. invoke rosinstall_generator to resolve remaining source dependencies
3. invoke wstool to check out source dependencies
4. repeat 1-3 until all dependencies are satisfiable
5. invoke rosdep to install dependencies from binaries

• It will be nearly impossible to resolve dependencies for packages that depend on other user packages that aren't listed in rosdistro
• How should we handle checking out a user's fork of a project?
• What if they've checked out upstream, made changes, and then want to switch to their fork?
• Should we make it easy to check out a different branch of a project?