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The short answer is no. In order to make a ROS node, you need a ROS installation. In the past, I've also wanted a drop-in ROS library with development header files, so I understand what you're going for.

The prescribed way to do what you're trying to do, given you have a bunch of pre-existing code, is as follows: Form your code into libraries that can be used by a set of executable ROS nodes that all speak the ROS language. For example, if you have an image transform class that takes an image and spits out the transformed image, you'll include that as an external library to a ROS node that has the same interfaces.

Here's the ROS tutorial for wrapping external libraries: Wrapping External Libraries