arch-ros-stacks

• How it works
• How to contribute
  • PKGBUILD creation and update
    • Miscellaneous features
    • PKGBUILD creation
    • PKGBUILD update
    • AUR upload
    • Pull requests (PR) to arch-ros-stacks
    • Setting push URLs
    • Conversion to AUR4 packages (legacy)
  • Python version

This is a fork of zootboy's fork of hauptmech's fork of moesenle's very nice arch-ros-stacks.

I am currently maintaining Indigo/Jade packages for Arch Linux. I also accept pull requests for Groovy and Hydro packages (that I no longer maintain).

Please e-mail me with any suggestions, comments or package requests for Indigo/Jade:

<chretien+aur at lirmm dot fr>

How it works

Since the AUR now stores PKGBUILDs as Git repositories, each ROS package is handled as a Git submodule (except some older packages). Such packages contain two files:

• a PKGBUILD script that details the dependencies, versions, how to compile the package etc. This file is automatically generated by a Python script.
• a .SRCINFO file required for the AUR upload. This file is generated with mksrcinfo.

Once these files are generated, they simply need to be commited and pushed to the AUR, so that every Arch user can install the package with his favorite AUR helper.

To clone this repository, do:

$ git clone https://github.com/bchretien/arch-ros-stacks.git
$ cd ./arch-ros-stacks
$ ./parallel_submodule_update.py

This will initialize/update the (hundreds of) submodules in parallel. This is equivalent to the usual commands:

$ git clone --recursive https://github.com/bchretien/arch-ros-stacks.git

or

$ git clone https://github.com/bchretien/arch-ros-stacks.git
$ cd ./arch-ros-stacks
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update

except that it runs on steroids.

How to contribute

If you want to contribute, simply fork this repository, create or update some packages, push these packages to the AUR, and make a pull request afterwards.

PKGBUILD creation and update

The script that automates most of the work is import_catkin_packages.py.

Note that the default behavior is to fetch release information from the official rosdistro distribution.yaml.

Miscellaneous features

To list the options:

$ python2 import_catkin_packages.py --help

To list all available Indigo packages:

$ python2 import_catkin_packages.py --distro=indigo --list | less

You can also provide the output directory when listing packages, in order to see the ones that have not been generated yet:

$ python2 import_catkin_packages.py --distro=indigo --output-directory=/path/to/arch-ros-stacks/indigo --list | less

The Python version can also be chosen:

$ python2 import_catkin_packages.py --python-version=2.7 --distro=indigo --output-directory=...

PKGBUILD creation

To add a new official package called package_foo recursively:

$ python2 import_catkin_packages.py --distro=indigo --output-directory=/path/to/arch-ros-stacks/indigo -r package_foo

Note: packages created that way will be treated as submodules. If the remote repository is empty (e.g. new AUR package), an initial commit is automatically created to obtain a valid submodule commit id.

PKGBUILD update

To simply update package_foo:

$ python2 import_catkin_packages.py --distro=indigo --output-directory=/path/to/arch-ros-stacks/indigo -u package_foo

To recursively "force update" package_foo:

$ python2 import_catkin_packages.py --distro=indigo --output-directory=/path/to/arch-ros-stacks/indigo -rfu package_foo

AUR upload

PKGBUILDs are no longer explicitly handled in this repository. Instead, new packages are submodules pointing to the AUR. Thus, updating the AUR package is as simple as pushing a Git repositories. For this, you will need to create an account on the AUR (that way, you will also be able to report errors to package maintainers), and register an SSH key.

Before uploading anything, you need to make sure that the .SRCINFO file of the package is up-to-date, which can be done by running mksrcinfo.

Thus, the typical workflow once the PKGBUILD has been updated is:

# Go to the package directory, e.g. indigo/actionlib
$ cd indigo/actionlib
# Update .SRCINFO
$ mksrcinfo
# Review changes
$ git add -p .
# Commit
$ git commit -m "Update to version ..."
# Push to the AUR
$ git push origin master

If this is a newly created package, an initial commit should have been made. If everything looks good, only the git push step is required.

Pull requests (PR) to arch-ros-stacks

Now that packages are treated as Git submodules, the pull request should only contain new submodules (new entries in .gitmodules) and updated submodule commit ids. First, you need to make sure that you pushed the new/updated packages to the AUR. Second, to prepare the actual arch-ros-stacks commit for the pull request, go to the root of arch-ros-stacks. Then, if for instance you are dealing with indigo packages:

$ git add -p indigo

You should see differences involving Subproject commit .... Just add the packages that you updated if you are their maintainer in the AUR, and commit with a clear message, e.g.:

# If you added new packages:
$ git commit -m "indigo: add ... and its dependencies"
# or if you updated the packages you maintain
$ git commit -m "indigo: update ... and its dependencies"

Finally, push to your GitHub fork and make your PR.

Setting push URLs

Git can only store one URL for each submodule in the project. Since most users do not have SSH access to the AUR repositories, this URL is the read-only HTTPS URL by default. If you want to set the push URLs, simply run the set_pushurl.sh script, and any git push attemp will rely on the SSH URL.

Conversion to AUR4 packages (legacy)

The to_aur4.sh script can take care of uploading packages that are not submodules to the AUR. Since it works by creating a subtree of a specific package from arch-ros-stacks, applying mksrcinfo to create the required .SRCINFO file, and pushing the result to the AUR, it will only work if all pushes to the AUR of this specific package were done using it.

Recent versions of import_catkin_packages.py create/pull AUR submodules, so this is no longer required.

Python version

Starting with Indigo, Python 3 support is added to ROS. However, since most non-core packages are not Python 3 ready yet, we will continue using Python 2 for Indigo and Jade.