ionic/install_windows_src: More bulletproof terminal setup instructions

[peci1]

🦟 Bug fix

Summary

I've added a few tips for Windows usage based on my experience.

Checklist

• Signed all commits for DCO
• Added tests
• Updated documentation (as needed)
• Updated migration guide (as needed)
• Consider updating Python bindings (if the library has them)
• codecheck passed (See contributing)
• All tests passed (See test coverage)
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Note to maintainers: Remember to use Squash-Merge and edit the commit message to match the pull request summary while retaining Signed-off-by messages.

[peci1]

The PS console activation code comes from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64149680/how-can-i-activate-a-conda-environment-from-powershell#comment122022285_67996662 .

[peci1]

I actually don't know if it's the intended behavior that Gazebo requires to be run inside a VS shell. However, that's what was needed on my system. Without it (and with conda activated and workspace sourced), I get:

λ gz sim -s
Library error for [D:/programming/gz9-ws/gz-ws/install/bin/gz-sim9-gz.dll]: can't load D:/programming/gz9-ws/gz-ws/install/bin/gz-sim9-gz.dll

[traversaro]

I actually don't know if it's the intended behavior that Gazebo requires to be run inside a VS shell. However, that's what was needed on my system. Without it (and with conda activated and workspace sourced), I get:

λ gz sim -s
Library error for [D:/programming/gz9-ws/gz-ws/install/bin/gz-sim9-gz.dll]: can't load D:/programming/gz9-ws/gz-ws/install/bin/gz-sim9-gz.dll

That is indeed strange. Are you using Command Prompt or Windows Powershell?

[peci1]

I'm using the command prompt.

[traversaro]

Then something is indeed strange. If you want to debug more, you could try to load D:/programming/gz9-ws/gz-ws/install/bin/gz-sim9-gz.dll in https://github.com/lucasg/Dependencies in the same environment you are trying to run, and check if some dependent .dll is missing.

[peci1]

Weird. I just rebooted the computer and now it works in a normal CMD shell.

One possibility is that I'm using "conemu" as the command prompt, which normally just spawns a CMD subprocess and works the same as CMD. However, I've noticed that conemu is unable to reload system env variables if you change them - it always needs to reboot the computer. I don't know exactly which system variable it needed, but my guess is that this requirement to reboot can be attributed to conemu and that it should not affect other users.

[peci1]

I've removed the wording about VS command prompt from this PR.

[azeey]

We've noticed that versions of tinyxml or Bullet installed via chocolatey (as used in the ROS 2 install instructions) might cause weird issues like this.

[peci1]

Oh, I haven't dived into any ROS 2 + GZ tutorials. Combining Conda + Choco packages, that must be a very "interesting"... hell :-D

[Apurborj]

Hi