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I did this a while back, here is what I did.

First you need to have the pcl_msgs package which pcl depends on:

cd /tmp
mkdir pcl_ws
cd pcl_ws
wstool init src http://packages.ros.org/web/rosinstall/generate/raw/groovy/pcl_msgs

That downloaded pcl_msgs and all of it's dependencies into the src folder. Since I am on a Mac I just built everything from source, but if you are on Ubuntu and have everything from debian you can just do sudo apt-get install ros-groovy-pcl-msgs and then this:

cd /tmp
mkdir pcl_ws
cd pcl_ws
mkdir src

Either way, at this point you have the /tmp/pcl_ws/src folder now, which you should clones the master of pcl (1.7) into your workspace:

cd src
git clone https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl.git

Next you need to "ROS"-ify the pcl package. First you need the package.xml for pcl, we can get this from the released version (it hasn't changed from 1.6 to 1.7):

cd pcl
wget https://raw.github.com/ros-gbp/pcl-release/release/pcl/1.6.0/package.xml

Next you will want to edit the cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake file to hard code the USE_ROS option to ON, here is a patch:

diff --git a/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake b/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake
index cf2e1e3..b426066 100644
--- a/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake
+++ b/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ endmacro(get_ros_inc_path)
 set(ROS_DISTRO $ENV{ROS_DISTRO})

 if(ROS_DISTRO)
-    option(USE_ROS "Integrate with ROS rather than using native files" OFF)
+    option(USE_ROS "Integrate with ROS rather than using native files" ON)
     message(STATUS "Found ROS; USE_ROS is ${USE_ROS}; ROS-Distro: ${ROS_DISTRO}")
     if(USE_ROS)
         # Search for ROS

Now you need to make sure things build on top of pcl-1.7, so get pcl_ros:

cd /tmp/pcl_ws/src/
git clone https://github.com/ros-perception/perception_pcl.git

Now you can build your pcl workspace:

cd /tmp/pcl_ws
source /opt/ros/groovy/setup.bash  # Only if you are using debians
catkin_make_isolated --install  # prefix with `./src/catkin/bin/` if not using debians

Now assuming you didn't run into any build errors, then you should have a folder at /tmp/pcl_ws/install_isolated which you can source to utilize pcl and pcl_ros:

source /tmp/pcl_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash

I did this a while back, here is what I did.

First you need to have the pcl_msgs package which pcl depends on:

cd /tmp
mkdir pcl_ws
cd pcl_ws
wstool init src http://packages.ros.org/web/rosinstall/generate/raw/groovy/pcl_msgs

That downloaded pcl_msgs and all of it's dependencies into the src folder. Since I am on a Mac I just built everything from source, but if you are on Ubuntu and have everything from debian you can just do sudo apt-get install ros-groovy-pcl-msgs and then this:

cd /tmp
mkdir pcl_ws
cd pcl_ws
mkdir src

Either way, at this point you have the /tmp/pcl_ws/src folder now, in which you should clones clone the master of pcl (1.7) into your workspace:(1.7):

cd src
git clone https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl.git

Next you need to "ROS"-ify the pcl package. First you need the package.xml for pcl, we can get this from the released version (it hasn't changed from 1.6 to 1.7):

cd pcl
wget https://raw.github.com/ros-gbp/pcl-release/release/pcl/1.6.0/package.xml

Next you will want to edit the cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake file to hard code the USE_ROS option to ON, here is a patch:

diff --git a/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake b/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake
index cf2e1e3..b426066 100644
--- a/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake
+++ b/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ endmacro(get_ros_inc_path)
 set(ROS_DISTRO $ENV{ROS_DISTRO})

 if(ROS_DISTRO)
-    option(USE_ROS "Integrate with ROS rather than using native files" OFF)
+    option(USE_ROS "Integrate with ROS rather than using native files" ON)
     message(STATUS "Found ROS; USE_ROS is ${USE_ROS}; ROS-Distro: ${ROS_DISTRO}")
     if(USE_ROS)
         # Search for ROS

Now you need to make sure things build on top of pcl-1.7, so get pcl_ros:

cd /tmp/pcl_ws/src/
git clone https://github.com/ros-perception/perception_pcl.git

Now you can build your pcl workspace:

cd /tmp/pcl_ws
source /opt/ros/groovy/setup.bash  # Only if you are using debians
catkin_make_isolated --install  # prefix with `./src/catkin/bin/` if not using debians

Now assuming you didn't run into any build errors, then you should have a folder at /tmp/pcl_ws/install_isolated which you can source to utilize pcl and pcl_ros:

source /tmp/pcl_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash

I did this a while back, here is what I did.

First you need to have the pcl_msgspcl_ros package in your workspace, or you need to install all of the debians which pclpcl_ros depends on:

cd /tmp
mkdir pcl_ws
cd pcl_ws
wstool init src http://packages.ros.org/web/rosinstall/generate/raw/groovy/pcl_msgs

That downloaded pcl_msgs and all of it's dependencies into the src folder. on. Since I am on a Mac mac, I just built everything will fetch all of the dependencies and build them from source, but if you are on Ubuntu so I will start like this:

cd /tmp
mkdir pcl_ws
cd pcl_ws
wstool init src http://packages.ros.org/web/rosinstall/generate/raw/groovy/pcl_ros

That downloaded pcl_ros and have everything all of it's dependencies into the src folder, including pcl-1.6 which is what is released with groovy. Lets remove that version of pcl so that we can replace it later:

rm -rf src/pcl

If you only want to rebuild pcl and pcl_ros from debian you can just do source then run sudo apt-get install ros-groovy-pcl-msgs ros-groovy-pcl-ros in order to get all of the dependencies you need and then this:setup an empty workspace:

cd /tmp
mkdir pcl_ws
cd pcl_ws
mkdir src

Either way, at this point you have the /tmp/pcl_ws/src folder now, in which you should clone the master of pcl (1.7):

cd src
git clone https://github.com/PointCloudLibrary/pcl.git

Next you need to "ROS"-ify the pcl package. First you need the package.xml for pcl, we can get this from the released version (it hasn't changed from 1.6 to 1.7):

cd pcl
wget https://raw.github.com/ros-gbp/pcl-release/release/pcl/1.6.0/package.xml

Next you will want to edit the cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake file to hard code the USE_ROS option to ON, here is a patch:

diff --git a/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake b/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake
index cf2e1e3..b426066 100644
--- a/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake
+++ b/cmake/pcl_find_ros.cmake
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ endmacro(get_ros_inc_path)
 set(ROS_DISTRO $ENV{ROS_DISTRO})

 if(ROS_DISTRO)
-    option(USE_ROS "Integrate with ROS rather than using native files" OFF)
+    option(USE_ROS "Integrate with ROS rather than using native files" ON)
     message(STATUS "Found ROS; USE_ROS is ${USE_ROS}; ROS-Distro: ${ROS_DISTRO}")
     if(USE_ROS)
         # Search for ROS

Now you need to make sure things build on top of pcl-1.7, so get pcl_ros:

 from source (if you don't already have it):
 
# Only do this if you did not run the wstool command earlier
cd /tmp/pcl_ws/src/
git clone https://github.com/ros-perception/perception_pcl.git
 
Now you can build your pcl workspace:
 
cd /tmp/pcl_ws
source /opt/ros/groovy/setup.bash  # Only if you are using debians
catkin_make_isolated --install  # prefix with `./src/catkin/bin/` if not using debians
 
Now assuming you didn't run into any build errors, errors (I didn't get any on my Mac just now), then you should have a folder at /tmp/pcl_ws/install_isolated which you can source to utilize pcl and pcl_ros:
 
source /tmp/pcl_ws/install_isolated/setup.bash