Creating a topic without a leading forward slash

[spiderkeys]

Referencing:
#192

ROS2 Version:
Dashing

I am working on a ROS2 application in which I need to publish to topics which do not have leading forward slashes. The target of communication is a pure DDS application, not a ROS2 application. I was hoping that using avoid_ros_namespace_conventions=true would help me achieve this, but it looks like there is still a leading slash on any topics created using this method preventing the ability to interoperate.

Looking at the previous discussions, it seems like this was punted on until someone had a use-case. I'm not sure how useful avoid_ros_namespace_conventions can be, if it always assumes non-ROS nodes to start with a forward slash. Such an assumption seems highly arbitrary.

Are there any plans to address this, or perhaps there might be another way I can accomplish this?

[spiderkeys]

Closing this, as I just found ros2/ros2#496, which seems to be a better place to discuss.