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As an example of another possible way to setup, note that pr2_description by default exports the robot URDF as well as XML extensions for simulation plugins and mechanism controls. But pr2_description does not depend on any of the robot/simulation/mechanism packages.

In effect, we are not interpreting package/stack dependencies based on XML dependencies (i.e. pr2_description export <gazebo> extensions but do not depend on gazebo. Similarly, pr2_description exports <transmission> extensions used by pr2_mechanism stack, but do not depend on it).

Therefore, for the PR2 there two main stacks, one for real-robot and the other for simulation:

• pr2_robot - a stack that depends on all the real-world robot drivers, and on pr2_description, but does not depend on any of the simulation-related packages.
• pr2_simulator - a stack that contains/depends on the simulator_gazebo and plugins for running the PR2 simulation. pr2_simulator also depends on pr2_description.

Alternatively, if you want to keep the real-robot and simulation XML's separate, I imagine the following package structure/dependency might work too,:

• mybot_description - contains XML for the robot only, without any simulation XML tags. Depends on XML parser/manipulation tools like xacro, ivcon, tinyxml, etc.
• mybot_robot - depends on robot_description and anything else needed to bring up the robot in real world.
• mybot_gazebo_description - depends on robot_description, and in addition includes gazebo XML tags (e.g. using <includes> and xacro as Dimitri suggested).
• mybot_gazebo - depends on simulator, plugins and mybot_gazebo_description.