ROS and ubuntu 22

General
1

There’s some conflicting info around that I’d like clarity on, if possible.

First of all, multiple places such as REP 3 -- Target Platforms (ROS.org)
imply that (“noetic” is the last release of ROS1, and it is for Ubuntu )
And then there is also a general understanding that Ubuntu is kinda the official linux for ROS.

It is also written that “rosversion -d” will tell you the version of ros installed.

With the above in mind, I was surprised to find out that a current install of Ubuntu 22… has available packages such as “ros-core”, and “ros-desktop-full-developer”, etc.

When I install them, and run “rosversion -d”, I get…
“Debian”

I was expecting to see something like “noetic”.
So … what does this mean, as far as “Is it now okay to actually use Ubuntu 22 for ROS 1 development, instead of Ubuntu20+noetic?”

As a random point of comparison, both ros “noetic” and ros “Debian” have catkin version 0.8.10
However, noetic has a ros master package version of 1.16.0
whereas “Debian” has python3-rosmaster 1.15.14+ds-2build2

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2

Note that ros-core and ros-desktop-full-developer are packages included in the Ubuntu apt repos by Canonical. They are not part of the official ROS distros available from ros.org via its apt repos. I’ve used ros-core as a runtime ros master on devices that didn’t otherwise have proper ROS installed, but I vaguely recall having difficulties using these packages for development – probably due to differences along the lines of what you’ve already discovered.

3

Hmm.
Well, I havent gotten too deeply into it, just because they are missing packages for “gazebo-ros”, aka “ros-gz”, and xacto.

Other than that, it looks viable at first glance.
I filed a bug with them about it.
Maybe you wanna put in your 2c as well.

4

You can find out more about these packages at:

http://wiki.ros.org/UpstreamPackages

The Ubuntu packages are inherited from the Debian Science Robotics packaging efforts. I would recommend engaging with them rather than the Ubuntu/Canonical team in Launchpad as the Ubuntu packages are just imports from the Debian packaging effort.

You can find out more here: DebianScience/Robotics/ROS - Debian Wiki

2 Likes
5

Ah, thanks for that info.
Most relevant page would seem to be:

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianScience/Robotics/ROS/Packages

Which mentions that the packages I care about, xacto, and gazebo-ros, are "not in debian offically but can be used. They are WIP."not in debian offically but can be used. They are WIP.

(and it gives the github references for them)

I would say that still leaves some issues for the Ubuntu team to address, in the ubuntu packages.
First of all, the hits I mentioned, for when using “apt-get search”, for xacto and gazebo, need to be REMOVED from those ubuntu ros packages. They are misleading in the extreme.

Secondly, I would suggest that the Ubuntu README file within ros-robot, and possibly those other packages, be updated to reference the wiki page that I mentioned in this email.

6

To keep things linked: "upstream packages" increasingly becoming a problem.

1 Like
7

that… is a FOUR year old thread.
It is discouraging that there is not better organization after 4 years :frowning:

8

Aren’t you preaching to the choir?

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9

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