Using roscreate

Before we create a package, let's see how the roscreate-pkg command-line tool works. This creates a new ROS package. All ROS packages consist of the many similar files : manifests, CMakeLists.txt, mainpage.dox, and Makefiles. roscreate-pkg eliminates many tedious tasks of creating a new package by hand, and eliminates common errors caused by hand-typing build files and manifests.

To create a new package in the current directory:

# roscreate-pkg [package_name]

You can also specify dependencies of that package:

# roscreate-pkg [package_name] [depend1] [depend2] [depend3]

Creating a New ROS Package

Now we're going to go into your home or project directory and create our beginner_tutorials package. We are going to make it depend on std_msgs, roscpp, and rospy, which are common ROS packages.

Now go into the ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox directory:

$ cd ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox

Alternatively, if you use Fuerte or later release, you can simply do:

$ roscd
$ cd sandbox

Then create your package:

$ roscreate-pkg beginner_tutorials std_msgs rospy roscpp

You will see something similar to:

• Creating package directory ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox/beginner_tutorials
  Creating include directory ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox/beginner_tutorials/include/beginner_tutorials
  Creating cpp source directory ~/ros/ros_tutorials/beginner_tutorials/src
  Creating python source directory ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox/beginner_tutorials/src/beginner_tutorials
  Creating package file ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox/beginner_tutorials/Makefile
  Creating package file ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox/beginner_tutorials/manifest.xml
  Creating package file ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox/beginner_tutorials/CMakeLists.txt
  Creating package file ~/fuerte_workspace/sandbox/beginner_tutorials/mainpage.dox
  
  Please edit beginner_tutorials/manifest.xml and mainpage.dox to finish creating your package

You're going to want to spend some time looking at beginner_tutorials/manifest.xml. manifests play an important role in ROS as they define how Packages are built, run, and documented.

Now lets make sure that ROS can find your new package. It is often useful to call rospack profile after making changes to your path so that new directories will be found:

$ rospack profile
$ rospack find beginner_tutorials 

• YOUR_PACKAGE_PATH/beginner_tutorials

If this fails, it means ROS can't find your new package, which may be an issue with your ROS_PACKAGE_PATH. Please consult the installation instructions for setup from SVN or from binaries, depending how you installed ROS. If you've created or added a package that's outside of the existing package paths, you will need to amend your ROS_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable to include that new location. Try re-sourcing your setup.sh in your fuerte_workspace.

Try moving to the directory for the package.

$ roscd beginner_tutorials 
$ pwd

• YOUR_PACKAGE_PATH/beginner_tutorials

First-order package dependencies

When using roscreate-pkg earlier, a few package dependencies were provided. These first-order dependencies can now be reviewed with the rospack tool.

$ rospack depends1 beginner_tutorials 

• std_msgs
  rospy
  roscpp

As you can see, rospack lists the same dependencies that were used as arguments when running roscreate-pkg. These dependencies for a package are stored in the manifest file. Take a look at the manifest file.

$ roscd beginner_tutorials
$ cat manifest.xml

• <package>
  
  ...
  
    <depend package="std_msgs"/>
    <depend package="rospy"/>
    <depend package="roscpp"/>
  
  </package>

Indirect package dependencies

In many cases, a dependency will also have its own dependencies. For instance, rospy has other dependencies.

$ rospack depends1 rospy

• roslib
  roslang

A package can have quite a few indirect dependencies. Luckily rospack can recursively determine all nested dependencies.

$ rospack depends beginner_tutorials

• rospack
  roslib
  std_msgs
  rosgraph_msgs
  rosbuild
  roslang
  rospy
  cpp_common
  roscpp_traits
  rostime
  roscpp_serialization
  xmlrpcpp
  rosconsole
  roscpp

Note: in Fuerte, the list is much shorter:

• std_msgs
  roslang
  rospy
  roscpp

ROS Client Libraries

You may be wondering what rospy and roscpp dependencies are from the previous examples. rospy and roscpp are Client Libraries. The client libraries allow different programming languages to communicate through ROS. rospy is the client library for Python. roscpp is the client library for C++.

Review

Lets just list some of the commands we've used so far:

• roscreate-pkg = ros+create-pkg : generates all the files needed to create a ROS package
• rospack = ros+pack(age) : provides information related to ROS packages
• rosstack = ros+stack : provides information related to ROS stacks