Creating a new .rosinstall file

[aadityasaraiya]

Hi!

So as per @gavanderhoorn's advice, I was trying to replace sub-modules from this repository and use a .rosinstall file instead to populate the workspace.

To get a better understanding of how .rosinstall work, I referred to this answer as well as this answer regarding wstool.

However, I am still confused about how to go about writing a .rosinstall file. I did find the .rosinstall format on ROS Install API information as well as an example .rosinstall file by OSL. However, my confusion is do I have to go about manually writing my own .rosinstall file or is there some better way to go about it?

I used the ROS Install Generator which has been mentioned in this answer but it didn't seem to work properly.

Sorry for the delay in completing this task. I am trying to get it done as soon as possible now.

Thanks in advance.

[gavanderhoorn]

@aadityasaraiya wrote:

However, my confusion is do I have to go about manually writing my own .rosinstall file or is there some better way to go about it?

how many dependencies / source repositories do you have? If only a handful, writing a .rosinstall file by hand takes minutes.

If you really want to use a tool, use wstool. It uses .rosinstall files to do its bookkeeping:

$ source /opt/ros/.../setup.bash
$ mkdir /some/catkin_ws/src
$ cd /some/catkin_ws/src
$ wstool init .
$ wstool set --git industrial_core https://github.com/ros-industrial/industrial_core.git
$ wstool up

At this point the .rosinstall file that is there is something you could use.

See the help of wstool set for more info on that command.

[gavanderhoorn]

And here is another example of a .rosinstall file: ros-industrial-consortium/godel/godel.rosinstall.

[aadityasaraiya]

@gavanderhoorn Thanks a lot. So with the example usage of wstool which you have given, I understood how an autogenerated .rosinstall will look like and hence writing one manually also seems possible.

So basically when a user uses a similar chain of commands for this repository as from the Godel Repository:

$ wstool init . 
$ wstool merge https://github.com/ros-industrial/workcell_explorer/raw/kinetic-devel/workcell_explorer.rosinstall
$ wstool update
$ rosdep install --from-paths . --ignore-src

they will have a workcell_explorer package, and the packages such as industrial_core and universal_robot (downloaded using the .rosinstall file) in their src directory. The workcell_explorer package will itself have the internal folders such as myworkcell_core and myworkcell_support etc.

Is my understanding correct?

[gavanderhoorn]

you can actually merge the three wstool lines:

$ cd /path/to/catkin_ws
$ wstool init src https://github.com/ros-industrial/workcell_explorer/raw/kinetic-devel/workcell_explorer.rosinstall
$ rosdep install --ignore-src --from-paths src

If you also list the workcell_explorer repository in your .rosinstall, the workspace would now contain all the packages that are in your .rosinstall file, and after rosdep completes all dependencies should also be installed.

[aadityasaraiya]

Thank you so much @gavanderhoorn. The changes have been made and I have tested it locally. Does the job.

[aadityasaraiya]

Sorry! I reopened the issue initially because I thought I had an issue. However, that thing is solved now.