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rosserial and custom message: cannot load package error

asked 2011-08-25 16:26:08 -0500

brice rebsamen gravatar image

updated 2011-08-25 16:28:09 -0500

I am trying to set an arduino node. Here is the short version of the story.

I defined a custom message ("lowlevel/Arduino") and generated the appropriate header using the script for that. The arduino code compiles alright. However, I am having a problem on the python_node side: it cannot load my package 'lowlevel':

[ERROR] [WallTime: 1314328569.317936] Cannot import package : lowlevel
[ERROR] [WallTime: 1314328569.318390] Failed to parse subscriber.

However, if I run the following commands in ipython, it seems to work:

In [1]: import roslib; roslib.load_manifest("rosserial_python")
In [2]: import rospy
In [3]: roslib.load_manifest('lowlevel')
In [4]: m=__import__('lowlevel.msg')
In [5]: m.msg.Arduino
Out[5]: <class 'lowlevel.msg._Arduino.Arduino'>

What am I doing wrong? I did 'rosmake lowlevel' btw. This happens in diamondback, with ubuntu 10.04 packages.

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In that same program, could you add a hello world publisher just to make sure that everything else is working correctly?
adasta gravatar image adasta  ( 2011-08-25 17:12:57 -0500 )edit
Done: a publisher (Bool) and a subscriber (FLoat64). It works: they are reported by the python_node alright.
brice rebsamen gravatar image brice rebsamen  ( 2011-08-25 18:15:03 -0500 )edit
It's getting weirder: after some fiddling with the rosserial code (added a couple of loginfo) it started to work. Then I had to delete and download again my (svn-based) code, and things don't work anymore...
brice rebsamen gravatar image brice rebsamen  ( 2011-08-31 17:27:20 -0500 )edit
could you post your arduino code?
adasta gravatar image adasta  ( 2011-09-01 09:35:15 -0500 )edit
I can post my code, but where? Here we are limited to a few characters only... Besides, I don't think the code will help, you would also need my message definition, and my package structure... Please advise
brice rebsamen gravatar image brice rebsamen  ( 2011-09-03 01:37:32 -0500 )edit
Nevertheless I found something. I the load_pkg_module function, my package is actually found in the path (in_path is True at the end of the for loop). Therefore, the manifest is not loaded and the __import__ call fails. If however I do call load_manifest(package), the __import__ call succeeds.
brice rebsamen gravatar image brice rebsamen  ( 2011-09-03 01:41:21 -0500 )edit
Which makes me think: how come my package is in my path? I posit that it's because it's the current directory. So if I run from the 'lowlevel' directory then it is in the path and then load_manifest is not called. In that case, lowlevel.msg is not found because it is in the src subdirectory.
brice rebsamen gravatar image brice rebsamen  ( 2011-09-03 02:34:43 -0500 )edit
If all of that is correct (I am currently not in front of my work computer so I can't test), then it seems that testing if the package is in the path and skipping the load_manifest call if it is is not a good idea...
brice rebsamen gravatar image brice rebsamen  ( 2011-09-03 02:37:19 -0500 )edit

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answered 2011-09-05 03:21:25 -0500

adasta gravatar image

updated 2011-09-05 03:28:37 -0500

Hi Brice,

You found a pretty tricky bug! I guess we had never tried to run rosserial_python from within the package of a custom message. Python automatically adds the working directory of a python executable to the python sys.path. As a result, when rosserial_python went to check if it had the package in its sys.path, it found the current working directory. I just updated the code to check for the src directory of the package instead of just the package name. It should work now.

Just pull the latest repo.

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Asked: 2011-08-25 16:26:08 -0500

Seen: 996 times

Last updated: Sep 05 '11