How to distribute a ROS package without sharing the sources

Question

Is there a way to distribute a ROS package without sharing the sources?

I just want the user to be able to run the ROS nodes without dependencies problems.

I know ROS is an open-source project, but I am not allowed to share the code.

Answer 1

Solution 1:

In your package CMakelists.txt, add the install directives. It goes like this :

install( TARGETS
    #list of nodes
    DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_BIN_DESTINATION}
)

install(TARGETS
    #list of shared libraries
    ARCHIVE DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_LIB_DESTINATION}
    LIBRARY DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_LIB_DESTINATION}
)

install(FILES 
  #list of necessary files (xml...)
  DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_SHARE_DESTINATION}
)

install(DIRECTORY 
  include/${PROJECT_NAME}/
  DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_INCLUDE_DESTINATION}
  PATTERN ".svn" EXCLUDE
  PATTERN ".git" EXCLUDE
)

Using

 $ catkin_make 
 $ catkin_make install

you can create the binaries needed for execution without sharing the code. This will create another folder /install in addition to the usual /devel and /build in your catkin workspace.

Note : You can specify the install folder using :

 $ catkin_make -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=path/to/folder install

Just make sure that the binaries need to be compiled for the correct architecture that the other computer has and any dependencies you do not have in your workspace when you invoke catkin_make need to also be installed by the other part before being used.

Now that you have the /install folder, just zip & send it.

Now, the essential part would be adding the install/setup.bash to your the other machine .bashrc, or ROS won't find the distributed pacakges.

$ echo "source ~/catkin_ws/install/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc

See here for more information.

Solution 2:

you can have bloom generate you a deb-src and then you can compile that and distrbute the .deb file, ion the other machine, you can install it with dpkg -i. This could be done by following this part of the pre-release tutorial.