"fetch" and "update" your dependencies with catkin_tools

Defines new verb dependencies (or in short deps) and its sub-verbs fetch and update for catkin_tools. This verb is responsible for downloading external dependencies of the projects in a catkin workspace and keeping them up to date. For now only git is supported. The tool is under heavy development. Please use PyPI or download a tag for a stable version.

How to install

This package installs a new verb for catkin_tools. The easiest way to install this verb is from PyPI:

[sudo] pip install catkin_tools_fetch

How to use

Both available subverbs should be used after dependencies verb (or its shorter version deps) from within of a catkin workspace. Below are short showcases on usage of the verbs. Optional arguments are shown in brackets.

fetch

# Longer version:
catkin dependencies fetch [--default_urls URL1,URL2,URL3] [TARGET_PKG]
# Equivalent shorter version:
catkin deps fetch [--default_urls URL1,URL2,URL3] [TARGET_PKG]

update

# Longer version:
catkin dependencies update [TARGET_PKG]
# Equivalent shorter version:
catkin deps update [TARGET_PKG]

How fetch works

This command will look inside the src/ folder of the current catkin workspace and will analyze the dependencies of each package.xml file for each project in this workspace (or, if TARGET_PKG is provided, only of this package). Then fetch will try to clone the dependencies looking for them under urls:

[URL1/DEP_NAME, URL1/DEP_NAME, URL1/DEP_NAME]

The verb fetch is smart enough to recognize ssh and https access, thus these expansions for a given DEP_NAME are valid:

git@path     --> git@path/DEP_NAME.git
https://path --> https://path/DEP_NAME

Beware, though, that for ssh access your machine has to have proper ssh keys installed.

Additionaly, one can explicitly define needed urls for dependencies in package.xml of your TARGET_PKG file under <export> tag. For example:

<export>
    <!-- Define a url for all packages with no explicit url defined. -->
    <git_url target="all" url="https://github.com/niosus" />
    <!-- Define ANOTHER url for all packages with no explicit url defined. -->
    <!-- There can be arbitrarily many of these. -->
    <git_url target="all" url="https://gitlab.com/niosus" />
    <!-- Define an explicit url for package DEP_NAME. -->
    <git_url target="DEP_NAME" url="git@some_path/DEP_NAME.git" branch="BRANCH_NAME" />
</export>

There are some options here:

• If the target is set to "all", then the url is treated as one of the default urls to search all packages in. There can be any number of entries with target set to "all".
• If the target package "DEP_NAME" matches one of the dependencies, this has precedence over any of the default urls and the package will be searched in the full path to the package defined in the url field. Additionaly, branch "BRANCH_NAME" will be checked out after cloning.

Any of these can be skipped. The default urls will be used instead.

How update works

The update subverb will try to pull any changes from the server to any package in the workspace (or TARGET_PKG if specified) if there is no change locally. If there are local uncommited changes update will do nothing for those packages. There is no need to provide any urls here as every package knows its git remote.

Misc

You can always use --help flag to find out more about each command and arguments.