Why is eclipse complaining about links?

Question

I'm trying to open costmap_2d in eclipse, but I get the following error when trying to import:

Error processing changed links in project description file. Cannot create a link to '/home/tim/ros_source/electric/navigation/costmap_2d' because it overlaps the location of the project that contains the linked resource.

I have no idea what this means. I get similar errors for all other packages.

I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10. I've successfully built ROS from source. I have eclipse indigo for c/c++ developers. Here's what I'm doing:

1. rosmake costmap_2d
2. make eclipse-project
3. open eclipse
4. Import... > General > Existing project
5. Browse to /home/tim/ros_source/electric/ros_comm/clients/cpp/roscpp
6. don't select copy into workspace, press finish
7. error

The project seems to get partially imported, but it's pretty manged.

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The manged project has some issues. They might be related, or they may just be a side effect.

Invalid project path: Include path not found (/home/tim/ros_source/electric/driver_common/dynamic_reconfigure/msg/cpp).

Invalid project path: Include path not found (/home/tim/ros_source/electric/driver_common/dynamic_reconfigure/srv/cpp).

Invalid project path: Include path not found (/home/tim/ros_source/electric/ros/core/roslib/msg_gen/cpp/include).

The first two seems a little weird, shouldn't those be msg_gen/cpp/include and srv_gen/cpp/include?

I'm also confused on the third one, because roslib doesn't generate messages, right?

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Originally posted by tperkins on ROS Answers with karma: 73 on 2011-12-14

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by tom on 2011-12-15:
Don't feel offended, please. You haven't written what solutions you already tried, which one normally should do if had tried any.

Comment by tperkins on 2011-12-15:
BTW, try posting a constructive comment next time. Do you honestly think I haven't already googled it?

Comment by tperkins on 2011-12-15:
Yeah I agree, it's an eclipse problem. But I posted it here because I image other developers are seeing the same thing, given I have a fresh install (and I haven't done anything weird, I promise). And if I figure it out myself, I can answer my own question.

Comment by tom on 2011-12-14:
This seems to be a problem of the directory tree and is rather Eclipse related, I'd look for solutions elsewhere, like on stackoverflow. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=because+it+overlaps+the+location+of+the+project+that+contains+the+linked+resource

Answer 1

The warnings are a result of packages exporting a non-existing paths in their manifest, see these previous discussions on ros-users:

http://ros-users.122217.n3.nabble.com/ROS-Eclipse-warnings-td2479833.html

http://ros-users.122217.n3.nabble.com/Please-remove-references-to-msg-cpp-and-srv-cpp-from-package-manifests-td2168967.html#a2170278

Packages still exporting these paths should be ticketed for a fix (they just need to remove the non-existant include path from the manifest). That being said, I don't think it's related to your first problem. I have seen plently of these warnings using Eclipse, but never your first error.

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Originally posted by AHornung with karma: 5904 on 2011-12-16

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 0

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Original comments

Comment by FranciscoD on 2013-09-03:
This doesn't seem to fix the issue. The first error still persists for me when trying to work on the slam_gmapping package.

Comment by FranciscoD on 2013-09-03:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7000562/eclipse-cannot-create-a-link-to-dir-generated-by-cmake says it's because of the build directory, but the ros wiki page says that the make command should take care of this itself http://wiki.ros.org/IDEs#Creating_the_Eclipse_project_files

Answer 2

Just in case someone has a similiar problem, I had to adjust/conform the CMakeLists.txt to get eclipse import a package.

Compared to the active lines of a usual CMakeLists.txt, the on from that package was missing following lines, which might have disturbed eclipse as project and bin folder would be the same.

#set the default path for built executables to the "bin" directory
set(EXECUTABLE_OUTPUT_PATH ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/bin)
#set the default path for built libraries to the "lib" directory
set(LIBRARY_OUTPUT_PATH ${PROJECT_SOURCE_DIR}/lib)

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Originally posted by felix k with karma: 1650 on 2012-02-29

This answer was NOT ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by prince on 2012-02-29:
I had imported costmap_2d package standard Eclipse way and it works out of box. CMakeList do not contain above mentioned lines. I believe more deep inspection is required for this problem. I am using diamondback on Eclipse Indigo on Ubuntu10.04.

Comment by Martin Günther on 2012-11-14:
Thanks @felix, adding these lines solved the problem for me.