Usage details in repo

Tired of creating catkin packages from scratch?

Just run:

bash -c "$(curl -sLf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ToniRV/catkin_package_maker/master/make_catkin_pkg.sh)"

You will then be prompted to type the name of your catkin package, similar to this:

Type project name:
test

This will generate a fresh catkin simple package, including filesystem, and even README.md!

Creating new project at: ./test
Created file test/package.xml
Created file test/CMakeLists.txt
Created file test/src/test.cpp
Created file test/launch/test.launch
Created file test/README.md

If you have executed this inside a catkin workspace, just build and run:

catkin build
# Source your catkin workspace before!
rosrun test test

You should see something like:

[ INFO] [1569099086.150568624]: Hello World

If the command above is too long, just create a bash function in your ~/.bashrc:

make_catkin_pkg() {
  bash -c "$(curl -sLf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ToniRV/catkin_package_maker/master/make_catkin_pkg.sh)"
}

Long story:

How many times have you made a ROS package? If you name yourself a roboticist, probably more than one. Yet if you use the ROS built-in command to automatically create a catkin package (which I strongly discourage once you know a bit of ROS) you will find yourself with extremely long CMakeLists.txt file cluttered with comments, and a package.xml that merely duplicates the information that is already present in CMakeLists.txt.

Thanks to catkin_simple one can simplify by several hundreds of lines the catkin package. Unfortunately, that is not the official approach of ROS (yet).

Also, catkin_create_pkg will only generate a mere CMakeLists.txt and package.xml, leaving you with the hassle of building a proper filesystem yourself (w. include, src, launch, install, rviz folders etc).

Using catkin package maker, you can get a ready to compile and run catkin package for half of the hassle and the time to build it.

It works like this:

# Call catkin_package_maker from the web, no need to clone yourself
bash -c "$(curl -sLf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ToniRV/catkin_package_maker/master/make_catkin_pkg.sh)"

Provide the name of your project:

Type project name:
test

You should see something similar to this:

Creating new project at: ./test
Created file test/package.xml
Created file test/CMakeLists.txt
Created file test/src/test.cpp
Created file test/launch/test.launch
Created file test/README.md

The README even includes instructions on how to install and run the package!

Checkout the actual code in here.