Simple/scriptable setup and launching of prebuild binary Simulator

[hamishwillee]

One of the best things to come out of the 3DR DroneKit project was DroneKit-SITL. This is a Python script that allows you to download and run a native binary release of a simulator either "standalone" or from your test scripts.

The system is great because it allows you to use the simulator on a computer without having to do any dependency setup or run an installer, or find any of the bits. So if you're just wanting to test a current simulator build on QGC or a developer APIs it is zero effort setup.
It isn't as much help if you're running a custom build of PX4 because you still have to set up a native environment. But as you can use it to hook a local native build, you can still use it in your tests for vehicle bringup etc.

The downside is that the project was not maintained and the package build process was not automated - so the releases available for download are all quite old.

Anyway, the proposal is that we try create a binary simulator package with everything needed (e.g. SITL, gazebo, jmavsim, whatever) and automatically build it with Jenkins for PRs etc. Should make local testing easy and be a great boon to SDK developers.

This was raised in context of #11124. It is an idea for discussion, not a fully thought out proposal.

[stale]

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