2.Creating a ROS Package

Creating a catkin Package

This tutorial will demonstrate how to use the catkin_create_pkg script to create a new catkin package, and what you can do with it after it has been created.

First change to the source space directory of the catkin workspace you created in the Creating a Workspace for catkin tutorial:

# You should have created this in the Creating a Workspace Tutorial
$ cd ~/catkin_ws/src

Now use the catkin_create_pkg script to create a new package called 'beginner_tutorials' which depends on std_msgs, roscpp, and rospy:

$ catkin_create_pkg beginner_tutorials std_msgs rospy roscpp

This will create a beginner_tutorials folder which contains a package.xml and a CMakeLists.txt, which have been partially filled out with the information you gave catkin_create_pkg.

catkin_create_pkg requires that you give it a package_name and optionally a list of dependencies on which that package depends:

# This is an example, do not try to run this
# catkin_create_pkg <package_name> [depend1] [depend2] [depend3]

catkin_create_pkg also has more advanced functionalities which are described in catkin/commands/catkin_create_pkg.

package dependencies

First-order dependencies

When using catkin_create_pkg earlier, a few package dependencies were provided. These first-order dependencies can now be reviewed with the rospack tool.

$ rospack depends1 beginner_tutorials 

• roscpp
  rospy
  std_msgs

As you can see, rospack lists the same dependencies that were used as arguments when running catkin_create_pkg. These dependencies for a package are stored in the package.xml file:

$ roscd beginner_tutorials
$ cat package.xml

• <package format="2">
  ...
    <buildtool_depend>catkin</buildtool_depend>
    <build_depend>roscpp</build_depend>
    <build_depend>rospy</build_depend>
    <build_depend>std_msgs</build_depend>
  ...
  </package>

Indirect dependencies

In many cases, a dependency will also have its own dependencies. For instance, rospy has other dependencies.

$ rospack depends1 rospy

• genpy
  roscpp
  rosgraph
  rosgraph_msgs
  roslib
  std_msgs

A package can have quite a few indirect dependencies. Luckily rospack can recursively determine all nested dependencies.

$ rospack depends beginner_tutorials
cpp_common
rostime
roscpp_traits
roscpp_serialization
catkin
genmsg
genpy
message_runtime
gencpp
geneus
gennodejs
genlisp
message_generation
rosbuild
rosconsole
std_msgs
rosgraph_msgs
xmlrpcpp
roscpp
rosgraph
ros_environment
rospack
roslib
rospy