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Is ROS_PACKAGE_PATH really obsolete?

As mentioned in the ROS wiki,

With the introduction of catkin, ROSPACKAGEPATH becomes obsolete, and will be kept only for backwards compatibility with rosbuild packages.

From my understanding, ROSPACKAGEPATH is not obsolete as important tools like rospack will not work without it.

$ rospack find roscpp
/opt/ros/kinetic/share/roscpp

$ export ROS_PACKAGE_PATH=""

$ rospack find roscpp
[rospack] Error: package 'roscpp' not found

Is my understanding wrong? Or is this sentence referring to the specific necessity of ROSPACKAGEPATH during the build process, which catkin no longer needs?

Asked by BryceWilley on 2019-07-15 14:05:44 UTC

Comments

I'm not sure, but I've understood this to (partly) mean: the manual updating of ROS_PACKAGE_PATH is no longer needed.

It's certainly true that many tools still need it.

Asked by gvdhoorn on 2019-07-15 14:35:13 UTC

Thanks @gvdhoorn, that makes a lot more sense, and I think is a valid answer. I've clarified the wiki with your wording.

Asked by BryceWilley on 2019-09-13 08:18:46 UTC

Answers