Thank you! This is excellent! Code looks great. The only thing is that the urdfdom library should build & install without catkin as well. The package.xml and install system as it is now will be added to the release repo (I will do that), but for users that do not use catkin/ros, it would be nice to offer them the option to install as well.
Attn @hsu

@isucan I've removed the catkin build dependencies and just pasted in the setup() arguments from catkin.
Do you know of an easy way to have catkin still install a development version of the package to $ws/devel? I made some notes in the urdf_parser_py README for a Debian-based catkin development setup.

This is great, thank you! I will do the catkin stuff in the release repo so things get installed as the used to. That said, while the xml_reflection bit seems useful, this is supposed to be a repo specific for urdf. Is it possible to merge xml_reflection with the urdf_py package?

You're welcome!
Yes, I can move xml_reflection with urdf_parser_py. As far as Python modules go, would it be OK if the module path is still "xml_reflection", or would you like to keep it under "urdf_parser_py.xml_reflection" to keep things cleaner?

Thanks! I would prefer urdf_parser_py.xml_reflection to keep things cleaner.

thx for your work guys ! @isucan , any way you could release this asap ? The calibration package depends on that. Thx.

@eacousineau is it possible to remove from_parameter_server form the parser? It seems to be the only bit depending on rospy.

@vrabaud I will try to do so today. It is easy to do this as one package, with one package.xml; Not completely clear how to do it with two packages yet.

@isucan I moved the rospy import inside that function so that it only tries
to import it when it is called, so it shouldn't affect anybody unless they
want to use that functionality.
If you would still like me to remove it, though, I can put in a merge
request.
On Sep 1, 2013 4:09 AM, "isucan" notifications@github.com wrote:

@eacousineau https://github.com/eacousineau is it possible to remove
from_parameter_server form the parser? It seems to be the only bit
depending on rospy.

@vrabaud https://github.com/vrabaud I will try to do so today. It is
easy to do this as one package, with one package.xml; Not completely clear
how to do it with two packages yet.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/7#issuecomment-23621379
.

Seems good to me. I would prefer if we keep the parameter server in the function though. Thanks for the work!

Alright. Sounds like we keep this in :)
Any opinions on two vs one pkg in the installation? Aka, how badly do we
want it to be two pkgs?
On Sep 1, 2013 7:55 PM, "Thomas Moulard" notifications@github.com wrote:

Seems good to me. I would prefer if we keep the parameter server in the
function though. Thanks for the work!

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/7#issuecomment-23628576
.

Thanks for the excellent work.

To clarify, the dependency on rospy is optional right?

Yes, rospy is only imported if the developer calls Robot.from_parameter_server(). Otherwise it has no other ros dependencies.

Some greppage just to make sure:

$ grep --exclude-dir='.git' -rin 'ros' .
./urdf_parser_py/setup.py:13: 'url': 'http://ros.org/wiki/urdf_parser_py',
./urdf_parser_py/src/urdf_parser_py/urdf.py:417:        Warning: this requires roscore to be running.
./urdf_parser_py/src/urdf_parser_py/urdf.py:420:        import rospy
./urdf_parser_py/src/urdf_parser_py/urdf.py:421:        return cls.from_xml_string(rospy.get_param(key))
./urdf_parser_py/test/romeo/test.sh:3:orig="$(rospack find romeo_description)/urdf/$name.urdf"
./urdf_parser_py/test/romeo/gen.patch:12:-<robot xmlns:xacro="http://ros.org/wiki/xacro" name="romeo">
./README.txt:6:  http://ros.org/wiki/urdf
./xsd/autogenerated.urdf:2:<robot name="name1" version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.ros.org">
./xsd/urdf.xsd:12:     targetNamespace="http://www.ros.org"
./xsd/urdf.xsd:13:     xmlns="http://www.ros.org"
./urdf_parser/include/urdf_parser/exportdecl.h:51:// On Microsoft Windows, use dllimport and dllexport to tag symbols.
./urdf_parser/src/link.cpp:442:  // For backward compatibility, we fill the map from group_name to visual tag (for ROS Groovy);
./urdf_parser/src/link.cpp:479:  // For backward compatibility, we fill the map from group_name to collision tag (for ROS Groovy);