Documentation on how the message api works

[ModProg]

I'm trying to implement this for a project I'm writing in rust, so I cannot use the provided libraries.

I'm currently trying to follow the python implementation, but was wondering if there is a documentation on what a node needs to do to be compatible with dynamic_reconfigure if it is not using the libraries.

[mjcarroll]

I don't recall there ever being a design doc around dynamic reconfigure. At this point, I would consider the implementation a reference implementation.

I believe as a server, at a minimum, you need:

• ~/parameter_descriptions - A latched publisher of type dynamic_reconfigure::ConfigDescription (http://docs.ros.org/en/noetic/api/dynamic_reconfigure/html/msg/ConfigDescription.html) Which enumerates the list of available parameters.
• ~/parameter_updates - A latched publisher of type dynamic_reconfigure::Config (http://docs.ros.org/en/noetic/api/dynamic_reconfigure/html/msg/Config.html), which publishes the current state of the parameters
• ~/set_parameters - A service of the that takes the type generated from the .cfg files.

[ModProg]

I just noticed that the editor_method field is produced by using repr()... can this be assumed to be json like? And is there a reason a string is used instead of an actual object in the message? or at least something standard like JSON. https://github.com/ros/dynamic_reconfigure/blob/2654f228adae0848c6e9b70fcf07f890ca6a2841/src/dynamic_reconfigure/parameter_generator.py#LL269C21-L269C73

[ModProg]

For anyone interested, I documented my findings here: https://github.com/ModProg/rosrust_dynamic_reconfigure#the-dynamic_reconfigure-api