Which ROS Version should I use?

asked 2015-07-11 10:03:12 -0500

leet
31 ●1 ●2 ●3

updated 2015-07-13 00:06:46 -0500

allenh1

3045 ●62 ●89 ●110 http://allen-software.com/

Hello guys

this is a very basic question and I apologizse for this. But I never did something with ROS nad because of this I am an really beginner.

So I would like to use ROS to develop a better second version of my school robot project. I use a new Ubuntu 15.04 and because of this also ROS jade.

But many tools I would like to use like: ROSJava and Rplidar_ROS are only published for indigo or hydro.

So are there ways to use this old tools in a new ROS version. Or are there ways to use a old ROS-ersion on an new Ubuntu 15.04. I don't want to reinstall my whole operation system.

Thank you for your help!

Update:

Hi, I am also new to this forum/ROS in general.

I would like to use ROS/Gazebo to simulate robot control and test out the kinematics of various legged robot designs before I make physical prototypes. What version of ROS/Gazebo should I use? Should I go with the older but presumably more reliable Gazebo 2.x and Indigo because they go with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, or have significant improvements been made to both ROS and Gazebo to the point that the newer Gazebo 5.x and Jade are more stable?

Thanks for answering or pointing me to the right place to ask this question.

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answered 2015-07-12 21:38:34 -0500

allenh1

3045 ●62 ●89 ●110 http://allen-software.com/

updated 2015-07-13 13:10:37 -0500

It's hard to say specifically. This is what the install wiki has to say.

: ROS Jade Turtle is the latest release, but ROS Indigo Igloo is our LTS (Long Term Service) release, which is supported through the life time of Ubuntu Trusty, and it is recommended for situations where stability is paramount.

The packages you mentioned are probably close to begin ready, and, should they not be, you can definitely compile them from source. There are plenty of tools available to do this. This is the beauty of Linux: good code works where you least expect it to.

So I'm running Jade. I built one of the packages you mentioned, rplidar. To do so, all I needed to do was the following.

$ roscd && cd ../src
$ git clone https://github.com/robopeak/rplidar_ros
$ cd ../ && catkin_make

The package built cleanly and, as far as I can tell, is working. I just have a simple desktop_full install. But, if I were missing dependencies, I could have just run rosdep install rplidar_ros to get them.

Best of luck!

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answered 2015-07-12 22:28:01 -0500

vinjk
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For the sake of your sanity, i'd recommend ROS Indigo with Ubuntu 14.04 for the very same reason you highlight in question i.e., many packages are not ready for the new distro.

I too am quite new to ROS environment and Linux...so can't really help you on how to use packages meant for indigo on jade.

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answered 2015-07-13 11:05:29 -0500

Simon Schmeisser
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Differences between Indigo and Jade aren't that big, except for supporting newer Gazebo. So maybe just download (wstool) and compile (catkin_tools) whatever you need but cannot find as a jade package yet yourself. This should work on 15.04 as well.

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answered 2015-07-13 12:28:45 -0500

130s

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I added to the Distributions wiki page the list of recommendation depending on the usecases. http://wiki.ros.org/Distributions#Whi... (URL subject to change)

In addition to LTS / non-LTS being the major decision point as some people already pointed out, there can be some other relatively minor considerations per usecase.

(For me, only low version of Gazebo is available on LTS Indigo is getting an issue.)