Say I have 4 packages that I maintain, and wish to keep both an installed version and a local source version on my machine - installed for day-to-day work and source for testing features.

For these packages A, B, C, D

• A and B both depend on some catkin imports (like std_msgs) and nothing else
• C depends on both A and B
• D depends on C

I set my ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=/local/workspace/path/src:/opt/ros/{distro}/share so that roscd will go to the workspace, not the install folder.

In my CMakeLists for A and B I have a CATKIN_DEPENDS descriptor which lists the catkin imports it uses, so these can be passed transitively to C. C in turn has its CATKIN_DEPENDS on A and B so these can be passed onto D.

Inside of D's CMakeLists - if I print out the INCLUDE_DIRS variable for C I get something like

• /local/workspace/path/to/C
• /local/workspace/path/to/A
• /opt/ros/{distro}/include
• /local/workspace/path/to/B

Inside of C's CMakeLists - the INCLUDE_DIRS for A and B both include /opt/ros/{distro}/include - I assume CATKIN_DEPENDS strips out the duplicate lines on a first-in basis.

Given that all 4 of the packages are installed locally as well as in the workspace - the 3rd include prevents B from ever being found locally - even though the linking seems to find the correct locally generated lib.

Are there any solutions that allow transitive dependencies to work well like this and have the workspace-includes be preferred?

FWIW I am building with kinetic and catkin_make