Question about "./devel/setup.bash" while sourcing setup.bash

asked 2020-01-01 22:46:27 -0600

humpback
3 ●1 ●3

updated 2020-01-02 10:47:30 -0600

gvdhoorn
86574 ●283 ●1432 ●1054 http://cor.tudelft.nl/

Normally i source my environment with "source /devel/setup.bash" but i noticed in the tutorial that there is a period before the file location "source ./devel/setup.bash" Why is that period there?

p.s. This is my first post so im not sure where to really ask this question.

Edit:

This is the tutorial I was following: http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Tutorials/Exa...

# In your catkin workspace
$ cd ~/catkin_ws
$ source ./devel/SETUP.BASH

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Could you please link to "the tutorial" you refer to in your question text?

Perhaps even include a quote of the section you mention has the dot in it.

gvdhoorn ( 2020-01-02 09:31:12 -0600 )edit

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answered 2020-01-02 03:30:16 -0600

gvdhoorn
86574 ●283 ●1432 ●1054 http://cor.tudelft.nl/

Normally i source my environment with "source /devel/setup.bash" but i noticed in the tutorial that there is a period before the file location "source ./devel/setup.bash" Why is that period there?

A . (dot) in a path refers to the "current directory".

It makes whatever path comes after the dot relative to the current directory.

So source ./devel/setup.bash sources the file setup.bash in a directory called devel that must be in the current directory.

However, all paths not starting with a / are relative to the current working directory, so the dot is not actually necessary here.

This is my first post so im not sure where to really ask this question.

In the end this is not really a ROS question (more a general Linux one), but given the context it's fine.

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If you want to know more about this, you could Google for something like linux current directory dot).

gvdhoorn ( 2020-01-02 03:32:16 -0600 )edit

Wow, thank you for the quick response. Very well written.

humpback ( 2020-01-02 08:57:46 -0600 )edit

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