The current patch didn't work if the action is defined in an .idl file.

The current patch didn't work if the action is defined in an .idl file.

Do you have a recommendation how to identify if an action is being defined in an .idl file?
A naive solution would be to include the dependency regardless of if there are any action definitions.
Or I can add a TODO/issue to come back to this, since this PR is at least covering the common case of using .action files.

Instead of checking the extension it can check the directory name the interface file is located in.

Now we are checking the directory instead of the extension to infer if the interface is an action.

The current problem is ensuring that action_msgs is built before rosidl_generate_interfaces is called.
I'm not sure where to make this happen.

Since action_msgs itself depends on other message packages (builtin_interfaces and unique_identifier_msgs) and the generators themselves it seems like the only thing we can do is require that the user add a build dependency to action_msgs. We can at least eliminate the cmake lines for finding and depending on it and produce a nice error message in the event that they forget to declare a build depend tag in package.xml.

See ros2/example_interfaces#6 for how this makes life a little easier for users.

Also a note about this "magic" should be added to the docblock of the macro.

Building with connected PRs. Testing things known to use actions (rcl_action, rclcpp_action, and rclpy) and test_msgs:

• Linux
• Linux-aarch64
• macOS
• Windows

Looks like builds with OpenSplice aren't happy with this solution: http://build.ros2.org/job/Ddev__example_interfaces__ubuntu_bionic_amd64/4/

😨

Edit: False alarm.