Re: [gentoo-dev] New eclass: ros-catkin.eclass, new USE_EXPAND: ROS_MESSAGES, new categories: dev-ros and ros-meta for review.

[Alexis Ballier]

Hi,
 
> Hi Alexis.
>
> As  a gentoo user, an ebuild hacker and engineer, I'd suggest you
> include a wiki page for gentoo users, to document the gentoo specific
> issues.

Yes, this is planned. That part would be short though. The real work is
done in upstream wiki :)


> I'm a big fan of the new gentoo wiki. Access to either a
> 'virtual robot', or where to purchase devices that use ROS, would at
> least greatly facilitate folks  to participate with ROS  robotics
> codes. Include links to  the main  ROS repos, and relevant other urls.
> For example; one of the common things missing in such projects is
> an example linux kernel, stripped to optimize only the size and
> performance of the ROS devices and software. Showing this
> kernel .config would be keen. At list discussion why some of the key
> kernel configs are select is sorely missing in the world of robotic
> and UAVs, imho.

For the kernel part, I don't think this would happen: It *really*
depends on your needs. For the record, I've been running this on desktop
computers and several arm boards (rpi, odroid, udoo for instance). For
the arm part, if you can live with mainline kernel (kernel.org) lacking
some drivers (or even doing the mainlining yourself), then good,
otherwise you'll be stuck with the bugs of old vendor kernels...

In the end, you can see this as an add-on to anything that you can run
gentoo on :)

For the links to tutorials, ROS wiki is very good, and this is what
happens to be in the HOMEPAGE field of the ebuilds. (use eix)


Finally, for UAVs, I've seen some projects using linux, but usually
a more dedicated realtime OS running on a microcontroller is used (some
are arduino based) and then controlled via serial port from ROS that
will handle the computing intensive part (SLAM, localization, sensor
fusing, etc.).

Alexis.

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