What is in the directories src, build and devel?

Step 0. Create a project in Robot Ignite Academy(RIA)

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Step 1. What’s in the ROS directories

At first, let’s print what is under a ROS working space by typing the following command in a terminal

cd ~/catkin_ws	

You should see there are three folders called build/, devel/, and src/

To check what files will be created, we’ll use git here.

git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial"

These commands will create a commit with the files currently in the working space.

Then we’ll create a ros package under the src folder.

cd src/
catkin_create_pkg ros_dir_demo rospy

A package is created under the src folder in the ros working space. You can see that with the following command

cd ..
git status

Let’s commit it again

git add .
git commit -m "create package"

Then let’s compile the code and see what will ROS generates for us.

catkin_make

Now you can check it with the git status command again.

This time, you should see there are tons of changes in the build and devel directories.

In conclusion, these are the folders under the ros working space and what they aim to do.

src – contain the souce files for packages created
build – Cmake is run from hereto build the packages in src
devel – built files of package are placed here for development/testing
install – this folder will be created if you compile with the command  catkin_make install