reinit throws error

[LucidOne]

running sudo rosdep init twice should update the list of sources instead of throwing an error

$ sudo rosdep init
Wrote /etc/ros/rosdep/sources.list.d/20-default.list
Recommended: please run

    rosdep update

$ sudo rosdep init
ERROR: default sources list file already exists:
    /etc/ros/rosdep/sources.list.d/20-default.list
Please delete if you wish to re-initialize

[tfoote]

That's going to potentially loose information that someone added to the default list. It could do a diff and only error if there's a change. Possibly with a -f option to force update w/o checking the diff. But overwrite of user configuration should not be the default.

[tfoote]

From #202 it's important to be able to rewrite the sources when a new distro comes out. The -f will work well.

[baalexander]

Is the -f argument available in rosdep?

We're calling rosdep init in our deployment scripts, which may run more than once on a server. My initial expectation was if rosdep was already initialized, calling rosdep init again would just be ignored. If there's not a -f option, is there a rosdep clean or rosdep remove like command? Or am I best off just deleting /etc/ros/rosdep/sources.list.d/*?

[tfoote]

Right now the best solution is to use rm first. There's an effort to clean this up in process but it hasn't landed yet: read more at https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/ros-sig-buildsystem/BsUsgGPbubQ

[Lome789]

@wjwwood excuse me, how to use -f or remove default sources list file?

[tfoote]

You can remove the sources with sudo rm -rf /etc/ros/rosdep/sources.list.d/* followed by sudo rosdep init to get the default sources back.

[130s]

$ sudo rosdep init
ERROR: default sources list file already exists:
    /etc/ros/rosdep/sources.list.d/20-default.list
Please delete if you wish to re-initialize

Could the return code be just warning message instead of error?

I see this error often with custom Dockerfiles when switching a basis image from one where rosdep init hasn't run before to one that has already had it run. In that case the entire docker build stops due to rosdep init error. While this particular behavior can be worked around (e.g. use semicolon like RUN sudo rosdep init; rosdep update), returning error seems to me a bit overreacting.

That said, changing the return code could break other existing tools, so I don't foresee this behavior to change. Just a thought.