What is an overlay?

overlay

asked 2012-09-10 14:13:10 -0500

Jackie
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updated 2012-11-18 23:05:06 -0500

Lorenz

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I am new to linux and ROS. Installed ROS successfully and currently following the tutorial. It mentioned in the tutorial "overlay". Could anyone pls brief explain what it is?

Thank you

Jack

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answered 2012-09-10 21:35:22 -0500

Lorenz

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When installing ROS in Ubuntu from Debian packages, all packages are installed in /opt/ros/... and owned by root. That allows you to use them but not to change any source code or have additional custom packages that are compiled from source. An overlay is essentially a directory somewhere in the user's home directory that contains additional ROS packages. It is basically the user's workspace.