Catkin_pip v0.2 released

General
1

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let you know that I just released the latest version of catkin_pip.
After about a year working on it on and off, I ended up with a reliable way to use pip from catkin.
It will be in the next indigo & kinetic sync.

It is a set of cmake scripts to enable you to use usual python packages in ROS directly, without modification.
Python packages that follow Python Packaging User Guide only need a CMakeLists.txt and a package.xml, and you are ready to use them with catkin (build for devel, install, and as ROS packages) .

This makes depending on python packages much easier (no need to fork => less maintenance effort), and enables deploying existing python packages as ROS packages via a Third Party Release.

More details in the documentation : http://docs.ros.org/kinetic/api/catkin_pip/html/

I advise you try it out, if the basic catkin workflow doesn’t mix well with your python code.

2

So does this just wrap the Python setup.py ‘build system’ with CMake so catkin can use it?

Can this be used inside of an existing C++ package to allow use of Python with entrypoints and such within the same package?

Cool stuff.

3

This is targetted at python packages.

To mix n match C++ and Python, either you :

  • put C++ inside python and build it with catkin_pip as a normal python workflow.
  • put python inside C++ and build it with catkin as a normal catkin workflow
  • make two packages, one C++ with catkin and one python with catkin_pip, and have some API in between ( ROS or bindings ) which is probably the easiest for ROS devs.

Good luck !