AMENT versus COLCON Ignore files

Question

Hello!

I was wondering if AMENT_IGNORE files are still being used. I saw there are still some of them in some packages, like RTI Connext https://github.com/ros2/rmw_connext/blob/master/rmw_connext_dynamic_cpp/AMENT_IGNORE

Do AMENT_IGNORE still have a purpose since there is COLCON_IGNORE? Or is it something that has not been updated after the release?

Thanks

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Originally posted by pokitoz on ROS Answers with karma: 527 on 2018-08-06

Post score: 5

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Original comments

Comment by Dirk Thomas on 2018-08-06:
Since the current ROS 2 releases can be built with both - colcol as well as ament_tools - we kept the AMENT_IGNORE files for now.

Comment by pokitoz on 2018-08-06:
Thanks, I did not get that ament_tools was still being used. I though colcon became the new build tool. I guess I misread the release notes :P

Comment by Dirk Thomas on 2018-08-06:
colcon is indeed the recommended build tool as of Bouncy. But users are still using Ardent and we didn't want to require them to change their workflow. Also in Bouncy we still released ament_tools for convenience. But future releases won't contain ament_tools anymore.

Answer 1

Colcon always ignores folders containing COLCON_IGNORE. If colcon-ros is installed then it will also ignore folders containing CATKIN_IGNORE or AMENT_IGNORE.

As far as I know ament_tools doesn't support COLCON_IGNORE, so using the AMENT_IGNORE marker file allows building with either ament or colcon.

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Originally posted by sloretz with karma: 3061 on 2018-08-06

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 5

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Original comments

Comment by Dirk Thomas on 2018-08-06:
catkin_pkg (used by ament_tools) considers all three marker files too: see https://github.com/ros-infrastructure/catkin_pkg/pull/226