Maintain packages build from source

edit

2 . I follow the tutorial here in 1.2 and wsinit a folder in my catkin_ws/src folder.

Ok.

3 . If I want to build it, it says that there is a package missing: hardware_interface, it turns out that this package is not available for jade (yet), so I go ahead with my "missing package" algorithm which is the following:

hardware_interface is actually available on Jade (see debbuild/jade?q=hardware_interface), just not yet in the public repositories. Building from source is fine, but you may want to see whether you can use the ros-shadow-fixed repository.

4 . I go to my catkin_ws/devel and do rosws set <name> --git <url_to_repository_with_package_or_stack>

You're mixing wstool and rosws. Don't do that.

The reason you have to go to the devel folder is probably related to that.

5 . I update the ws: rosws update <name>

In a catkin workspace, please only use wstool. The arguments for set and update are the same.

And only do it in your src folder (which is where your .rosinstall file should be).

6 . I re-source: source catkin_ws/devel/setup.bash

But only after you've rebuilt your workspace .. right?

Finally: maybe you are already doing it, but you don't mention it: I'd recommend running a rosdep check --from-paths /path/to/your/catkin_ws/src --ignore-src between steps 5 & 6. That way you'll be sure you have all package dependencies installed, instead of having to find that out during catkin_make / catkin build.

Edit:

The problem is, that I don't know what tools I should use (wstool over rosws) and which I shouldn't.

I'm slightly confused: I thought I was quite clear when I wrote:

In a catkin workspace, please only use wstool.

Afaik, rosws was used with rosbuild workspaces, which is why it doesn't work quite so well with catkin.

Can you please tell me what my approach should be to get and build packages from source in a carkinws?

Basically what you've already been doing, but then only with wstool, and no trips to your devel space.

A concrete example (with wstool):

source /opt/ros/../setup.bash
mkdir -p /path/to/a/new/catkin_ws/src
cd /path/to/a/new/catkin_ws/src

wstool init .
wstool set <name> --git <url_to_repository_with_package_or_stack>
wstool up

cd /path/to/a/new/catkin_ws
# alternatively, use 'rosdep install ..' here directly
rosdep check --from-paths /path/to/a/new/catkin_ws/src --ignore-src

catkin_make
source devel/setup.bash

Alternatively, you could just do a git clone <url_to_repository_with_package_or_stack> in catkin_ws/src instead of using wstool. wstool comes in handy if you have many repositories to clone, and don't want to do it by hand.