Creating a ROS Package

Creating a ROS Package

A workspace is created, then a ROS package within the workspace.

Creating a Workspace for Catkin

1) We create a src file in the catkin_ws folder, move into it, and create a workspace called catkin_init_workspace:

  mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
  cd ~/catkin_ws/src
  catkin_init_workspace

2) Then we build the workspace:

  cd ~/catkin_ws/
  catkin_make

3) And create the setup.*sh file:

  source devel/setup.bash

Creating a ROS Package

4) Make sure you are in the src folder you had created earlier:

  cd ~/catkin_ws/src

5) Now we create a new ROS package: catkin_create_pkg <package_name> [depend1] [depend2] [depend3]

  catkin_create_pkg beginner_tutorials std_msgs rospy roscpp

This will create a beginner_tutorials folder which contains a package.xml and a CMakeLists.txt 5a) The package.xml contains the names of the dependenices. These can be checked by looking at the folder or typing:

  rospack depends1 beginner_tutorials

5b) To see all dependencies for the package and dependencies given in the xml:

  rospack depends beginner_tutorials

The xml file has a description (line 5), maintainer tag (lines 7,9, and 10), license tag (line 8), and dependency list (lines 12-20). Below is given a concise example of our beginner_tutorial xml file:

   1 <?xml version="1.0"?>
   2 <package>
   3   <name>beginner_tutorials</name>
   4   <version>0.1.0</version>
   5   <description>The beginner_tutorials package</description>
   6 
   7   <maintainer email="you@yourdomain.tld">Your Name</maintainer>
   8   <license>BSD</license>
   9   <url type="website">http://wiki.ros.org/beginner_tutorials</url>
  10   <author email="you@yourdomain.tld">Jane Doe</author>
  11 
  12   <buildtool_depend>catkin</buildtool_depend>
  13 
  14   <build_depend>roscpp</build_depend>
  15   <build_depend>rospy</build_depend>
  16   <build_depend>std_msgs</build_depend>
  17 
  18   <run_depend>roscpp</run_depend>
  19   <run_depend>rospy</run_depend>
  20   <run_depend>std_msgs</run_depend>
  21 
  22 </package>