[ROS Study Notes] (II) Creating the Workspace and Package

Concept of the Workspace

A workspace is a folder that holds project development files, similar to a project you create in an IDE on Windows.

Folders in a Workspace

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1. src: source space
2. build: build space; intermediate files produced during compilation, generally not needed
3. devel: development space; holds executables, libraries, and other artifacts during development
4. install: install space

Creating a Workspace

1. Create the Workspace

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
catkin_init_workspace

2. Build the Workspace

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make
catkin_make install #产生install文件夹

3. Set Environment Variables

source devel/setup.bash

4. Check Environment Variables

echo $ROS_PACKAGE_PATH

Creating a Package

catkin_creat_pkg <package_name> [depend1] [depend2] [depend3]

1. Create a Package

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
catkin_create_pkg test_pkg std_msgs rospy roscpp

Note: Packages must be placed under the src folder. A workspace cannot contain two packages with the same name.

After creating the package, the test_pkg folder contains the src and include folders and the package.xml and CMakeLists.txt files.

(1) src folder: holds source code files (2) include folder: holds header files (3) package.xml: information related to the package (such as the name, version number, license, author information, package dependencies, and so on) (4) CMakeLists.txt: describes the package’s build rules

To write Python code, create ascripts** folder under the package and place your Python code in it.**

mkdir scripts

2. Build the Package

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make
source ~/catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

ps. If recompiling the workspace fails after certain operations, you can try using catkin_make clean