use pcl upstream Debian package

[dirk-thomas]

We need to do these things:

• Import pcl debs from ppa
• Create two new rosdep rules for libpcl-all and libpcl-all-dev
• update rosdep rules, tag, and release packages which use the pcl rule currently
• email ros-users about the change

We need to (re)release these packages to use the new rosdep rule for pcl:

• pcl_conversions @wjwwood
• ecto_image_pipeline @vrabaud
• opencv_candidate @vrabaud
• pcl_ros @wjwwood
• ecto_pcl @vrabaud
• object_recognition_transparent_objects @vrabaud
• image_cb_detector @vrabaud
• depth_image_proc @vrabaud
• object_recognition_ros @vrabaud
• velodyne_height_map @jack-oquin
• gazebo_plugins @wjwwood

[wjwwood]

Waiting on @jspricke to get some debs together. Once he has them (in his ppa?) then we can try to import them directly.

[jspricke]

I've pushed packages for precise, quantal and rering yesterday.

[tfoote]

pcl-1.7* have been imported into the ros repos. The next step is to add rosdep rules and remove the pcl release repo?

[wjwwood]

Yes, but then we have to re-bloom any packages which directly depend on pcl.

[wjwwood]

Using this script:

from __future__ import print_function

from rosdistro import get_index
from rosdistro import get_index_url
from rosdistro import get_release_cache

from catkin_pkg.package import parse_package_string
from catkin_pkg.package import InvalidPackage

distro = get_release_cache(get_index(get_index_url()), 'hydro')
pcl_dependents = []
for pkg_name, raw_pkg_xml in distro.package_xmls.items():
    try:
        pkg = parse_package_string(raw_pkg_xml)
    except InvalidPackage:
        print("Skipping '{0}', which has a bad package.xml".format(pkg_name))
        continue
    if 'pcl' in [d.name for d in pkg.build_depends]:
        pcl_dependents.append(pkg.name)

print("These packages depend on 'pcl' directly:")
for x in pcl_dependents:
    print(" ", x)

These packages will be affected:

These packages depend on 'pcl' directly:
  pcl_conversions
  ecto_image_pipeline
  opencv_candidate
  pcl_ros
  ecto_pcl
  object_recognition_transparent_objects
  image_cb_detector
  depth_image_proc
  object_recognition_ros
  velodyne_height_map
  gazebo_plugins

[wjwwood]

I updated the issue with a check list of things we need to do.

[wjwwood]

After discussing this at length with @dirk-thomas @tfoote, we have decided to create a new pair of rosdep keys, libpcl-all and libpcl-all-dev and touch all of the packages listed above to use these two new keys.

[wjwwood]

@vrabaud If you need help doing this let me know, I will be working on it tomorrow.

[jack-oquin]

Is this going to break backwards compatibility with Groovy again?

[vrabaud]

most of those are mine, I can do them, just push your change and break things, they should be ready in time.

[jack-oquin]

The PR above releases velodyne_height_map-0.4.1, removing the PCL dependency.

Please check off that item in the list. I do not seem to be authorized to do it.

[mees]

(stupid) Question: if we use upstream PCL directly what happens with the kinect driver? Because there is a separate ros package with the kinect driver but AFAIK upstream PCL also ships with a kinect driver, that was removed in the ROS PCL package to not conflict with the other one.

[wjwwood]

@jack-oquin The easiest way to remain hydro-groovy agnostic is to rely on the transitive pcl dependency through pcl_ros or pcl_converisions.

@mees I haven't run into that issue, AFAIK the ROS driver and PCL driver only share a common dependency on libopenni (which we pull in from the pcl ppa also), they should not interfere with one another unless you try to run them at the same time.

@vrabaud Nothing should break unless we remove the ros-hydro-pcl package, which we would like to do but won't unless we get everything moved over.

[wjwwood]

@jack-oquin Looks your 0.4.1-0 is built, thanks for the fast turn around.

[wjwwood]

@vrabaud I released image_pipeline so that desktop-full no longer pulls in our ros-hydro-pcl. The other packages are lower priority, I'll let you handle those.