[Rock-dev] Feedback from a new user

[Martin Zenzes]

Hey,

I managed to transform an "existing" lib (for reading of data
from /dev/ttyUSB?) into the rock-layout, implement an orogen module to
access this lib and a small ruby-testscript to log the data using the
logger. so far so good.

a first round of feedback:

* in
http://gitorious.com/rock/buildconf-all/blobs/raw/master/bootstrap.sh
the default flavour is "stable", which does not work. Since it does not
work, the default-flavour should be "master" (which works) to avoid
confusion.

* adding a check to the scripts in ./base/scripts/bin/rock-* for the
parameter "--help" helps. In the moment, the result of "git clone
--help" is shown, which does not help... Also it may help to escape
directory's correctly, since this does not work:
	cd $ROCK_BASE
	rock-create-lib drivers/new_lib
but this works:
	cd $ROCK_BASE/drivers
	rock-create-lib new_lib
some sed-errors are thrown...

* in Rock.make the file Doxygen.In is searched to decide if the doc
target should be created, but in
$ROCK_BASE/base/templates/cmake_lib/README the name "doxygen.conf" is
suggested (so the suggestion is wrong).

* after buildconf-all, there are two directory's,
$ROCK_BASE/template_cmake_lib and $ROCK_BASE/base/templates/cmake_lib,
pointing to the same gitorius-repo, but having different
configuration-files

* when doing "autoproj --help", the printed options are prefixed by a
double-dash, which is not needed when when giving the options

* the ruby-statement "needs_configuration" in an orogen-file changes the
interface of Task::Task and Task::TaskBase... did cost some time to
understand this (especially that orogen only changes the template),
while looking for other problems ;-) Is this necessary?

* it may help to avoid confusion if a default
"drivers/orogen/new_lib/scripts/test.rb" is added to the
template-orogen-project. So a new user is pointed in the correct
direction, how to execute or use or test a new orocos module in the
default-way.

* the new "drivers/orogen/new_lib/new_lib.orogen" file could also
include default lines for the "doc" statement of each property/port?

* I wanna point out that setting the env-variable "ORBInitRef" like
suggested here
http://www.orocos.org/forum/orocos/orocos-users/ctaskcontext-name-could-not-find-corba-naming-service-orogen-example was contra-productive for me. Even when it was empty (but existent in a shell), the message "could not find CORBA Naming Service" appeared after starting the orocos module containing logger and my own module. Sylvain had to unset it explicitly (This may be a bug in omniOrb?)

A wishlist/questionlist:

* additionally to a working "flavour" mechanism, having the choice to
checkout and build all repository's with "commits not older than date X"
or "not older than commit Y" would be nice. So, two people or computers
could easily be synchronised to have the same sources. I know because of
the heavy development right now that doesn't make much sense... but
would be cool anyways

* How can I see what changed in single subrepos before (or after)
merging them during an "autoproj update"? At least the commit messages
would be nice, or the amount of changed code. I know I could go manually
to the subprojects of interest... Don't know how this could be
accomplished in a more elegant way from $ROCK_BASE?

* Links that where interesting for me (to help point new users in the
right direction):
- http://rock-robotics.org/index.html (of course... maybe a little bit
unstructured... searching would be nice...)
- http://www.dfki.de/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/rock-dev (mailing list,
import all mail in your local E-Mail client)
- http://gitorious.org/rock 
- http://spacegit.dfki.uni-bremen.de/ (DFKI-intern?)
- http://doudou.github.com/orogen/
- http://www.omg.org/gettingstarted/corbafaq.htm
- http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/ (haven't started yet on this one...)

Greetings

-- 
  M.Sc. Martin Zenzes
  Space Robotics

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