The site is read-only. Please transition to use Robotics Stack Exchange
| ROS Resources: Documentation | Support | Discussion Forum | Index | Service Status | ros @ Robotics Stack Exchange |
 | 1 | initial version |
Why is the architecture different and is there any documentation I can find about how this works and effects?
If by "architecture" you mean the file & directory layout then I believe that is easily explained.
I don't remember that the downloaded packages were installed in the src usually, correct me if I am wrong, I thought only the projects that I work on should be inside the src folder.
You are building everything from sources. To be able to build ROS from source, you need to create a Catkin workspace, download the base ROS packages into the src space of that workspace and finally you build that workspace using Catkin.
You created the workspace with mkdir ~/ros_catkin_ws.
wstool init src kinetic-ros_comm-wet.rosinstall downloaded all the base packages for you, as listed in kinetic-ros_comm-wet.rosinstall.
To build your workspace, you used catkin_make_isolated. That is a special version of Catkin that is capable of building workspaces with non-ROS packages, as is required when building the base ROS packages. catkin_make_isolated creates those *_isolated folders in your workspace (ie: build_isolated, devel_isolated and install_isolated).
You also appear to have build and devel folders. I don't think you'd normally have those, so it could be that you've ran regular catkin_make at some earlier point and these were left behind. They're not needed and not used any more.
In fact, none of the directories in ~/ros_catkin_ws are used, as you ran catkin_make_isolated with --install --install-space /opt/ros/kinetic, which places all the binaries and other installable artefacts in /opt/ros/kinetic.
| | 2 | No.2 Revision |
Why is the architecture different and is there any documentation I can find about how this works and effects?
If by "architecture" you mean the file & directory layout then I believe that is easily explained.
I don't remember that the downloaded packages were installed in the src usually, correct me if I am wrong, I thought only the projects that I work on should be inside the src folder.
You are building everything from sources. To be able to build ROS from source, you need to create a Catkin workspace, download the base ROS packages into the src space of that workspace and finally you build that workspace using Catkin.
You created the workspace with mkdir ~/ros_catkin_ws.
wstool init src kinetic-ros_comm-wet.rosinstall downloaded all the base packages for you, as listed in kinetic-ros_comm-wet.rosinstall.
To build your workspace, you used catkin_make_isolated. That is a special version of Catkin that is capable of building workspaces with non-ROS packages, as is required when building the base ROS packages. catkin_make_isolated creates those *_isolated folders in your workspace (ie: build_isolated, devel_isolated and install_isolated).
You also appear to have build and devel folders. I don't think you'd normally have those, so it could be that you've ran regular catkin_make at some earlier point and these were left behind. They're not needed and not used any more.
In fact, none of the directories in ~/ros_catkin_ws are used, as you ran catkin_make_isolated with --install --install-space /opt/ros/kinetic, which places all the binaries and other installable artefacts in /opt/ros/kinetic.
I thought only the projects that I work on should be inside the src folder
that is indeed the recommended setup and workflow and you can and should still do that.
I believe your confusion comes from the fact that you're assuming there can only be a single workspace. That is not the case. Using workspace overlaying you can build one workspace on-top of another.
When installing ROS using apt, the install space in /opt/ros is normally the one that is the base workspace. When building things from source (as you have done), the install (or devel) space of the workspace in which you built the base ROS packages becomes the base workspace.
In both cases your own workspace (where you'd "work on your projects") would be the workspace that extends the base workspace.
Now that you've installed the base ROS packages, you can create a new workspace that would contain just your own packages.
If you ever need to install additional base ROS packages into /opt/ros/kinetic, you'd have to follow a slightly different workflow that is shown at the end of the installation instructions in the Maintaining a Source Checkout section.
ROS Answers is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license.
