inconsistency in building system results when using rclcpp and rclpy

[JaehyunShim]

Hi @clalancette

Bug report

Required Info:

• Operating System:
  • Ubuntu 20.04
• Installation type:
  • source
• Version or commit hash:
  • latest master branch
• DDS implementation:
  • FastRTPS
• Client library (if applicable):
  • rclpy

Steps to reproduce issue

1. add a launch file as this link
2. colcon build --symlink-install

Expected behavior

A symbolic link should be added to /path_to_install_directory/package_name/share/package_name/launch/

Actual behavior

1. Not a symbolic link but a copy of the launch file is added.
2. The file is not added to /path_to_install_directory/package_name/share/package_name/launch/, but added to /path_to_install_directory/package_name/share/package_name/

if you add param or config files, the path to the files will be more important so I would like to ask if there is any way to add the entire param/config/launch directories using rclpy.

[clalancette]

If I remember properly, this is a limitation of the python setup.py installation. That is, I seem to remember that there is no way to convince setup.py to install with symlinks.

It might be possible to do something about this (by either enhancing setup.py upstream, or doing some work in colcon). For that reason, I think this issue should be closed and moved over to colcon (probably https://github.com/colcon/colcon-python-setup-py).

[JaehyunShim]

@clalancette

Thank you very much for your reply. What about the second point? ( i.e., adding directories including launch/param/etc files to the shared directory, not adding each of the files)

Thank you very much in advance,
Jaehyun

[clalancette]

Thank you very much for your reply. What about the second point? ( i.e., adding directories including launch/param/etc files to the shared directory, not adding each of the files)

I would suspect that is possible with setup.py, but I'd have to play around with it.

[clalancette]

I'm actually going to close this one in favor of the one you opened against colcon-python-setup-py, which is the appropriate place.

[JaehyunShim]

Did anything work for this?

I would suspect that is possible with setup.py, but I'd have to play around with it.

Thanks,
Jaehyun